


Twist of Fate

by DayDreamer315



Series: Plot Bunnies [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Evil Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter Has a Twin, Harry Potter was Raised by Other(s), James Potter Bashing, Lily Evans Potter Bashing, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, Not Really Harry Potter Centric, Not So Evil Voldemort (Harry Potter), Pre-Hogwarts, Voldemort is Full on Mama Bear, Voldemort is a Parent, War doesn't end
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:21:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27068536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DayDreamer315/pseuds/DayDreamer315
Summary: Prior to attacking the Potter's in Godric's Hollow Voldemort realizes just how insane he had become and sets about fixing it. With his sanity returned he stops acting like an idiot Gryffindor and starts acting like the snake he is. The dark side of the war actually develops a strategy beyond just rabid attacks and murder.Albus Dumbledore has all kinds of plans for his prophesied hero, all he needs is for Tom to actually attack.James and Lily love the idea that their son is going to be a hero.Fleamont and Euphemia just want everyone else to get their act together and stop being stupid children.
Series: Plot Bunnies [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1532360
Comments: 51
Kudos: 452





	1. The Dream

**Author's Note:**

> In this fic I've de-aged Voldemort so he's closer in age to his followers. In the books he's surrounded by the children of his school friends. No one should spend that much time hanging out with their friends kids, it's kinda creepy.  
> I put him about 10 to 15 years older than the Marauders and their classmates though I don't have an exact age for him.

Sometimes it is the littlest of things that changes the world. In this instance, it was a dream.

Tom Riddle, more commonly known as Lord Voldemort had been considering having an heir. Over the years he had had many offers from his followers to carry his heir for him. It was only recently he had narrowed down the list to find an appropriate barer and begun the process. It was thankfully very clinical between the two of them.

He had selected Francesca Zabini. Her family hailed from Italy and could trace their pureblood lineage back over 1500 years, back to the emperors of Ancient Rome. Francesca had moved to Britain with her parents when she was 7 after an unfortunate accident, as Francesca told it.

Francesca’s father was the youngest of two brothers. Her Uncle was the families heir, and had two young boys that would take his place after him. Even as a young girl Francesca had been ambitious and during a little boat ride with her cousins both boys ‘fell’ out of the boat. Both were completely fine, much to Francesca’s irritation, but her grandfather had felt they needed a little distance between her and her cousins.

As an adult Francesca was just as ambitious as she had been as a young girl, but she was more subtle. Francesca had never gotten over the fact that she was being kept from a position of power in her family by males, and her mind had latched on to that fact and it translated into a deep-seated hatred for the male gender. She only saw men as useful if they got her power or wealth.

Her latest plan was to have a daughter with the Dark Lord. If she had a daughter with his power and her looks there was no way her family would be able to keep her exiled to this dreary island, not that she was really exiled, she could visit, but they just didn’t trust her. But with a daughter like that no one would be able to stand in her way of becoming the head of family, and survive anyway. Given everything she had seen of the Dark Lord in recent years she doubted he would have much involvement in their daughters life so she would be able to make sure she was raised right. She just might be able to get her daughter everything that the Dark Lord had when she was older. The only problem she could see for getting her daughter her birthright in the future was that the Dark Lord had ordered the pregnancy be kept secret so no one would know of the existence of his child.

Francesca thought she was being delightfully clever, but Voldemort naturally knew her foolish plans, he didn’t reach his position by being an idiot after all. No, he allowed her delusions because it served his purpose. He was a Dark Lord, he had responsibilities, he couldn’t be catering to the whims of a child all day and night, he had a war to win. If Francesca wished to be responsible for raising the child he would allow it.

The two had married in a private ceremony. The marriage itself only took place as Voldemort did not want his child to be illegitimate and Francesca wanted wedding gifts from her family. They planned to stay together for as long as it suited them.

But the plans all changed after that dream. He would never know if the dream was just a fluke or if it had been sent by a higher being, but that single dream would have massive repercussions on the magical world for decades to come.

* * *

One night in late July 1979 Voldemort lay down after a long day of planning. Francesca lived in a room just down the hall from him.

It was very important for magical parents to stay relatively close to one another during pregnancy as magical children drew strength from their parents. If a couple was separated too long or to often it would risk the child being a squib or a miscarriage. That was why muggle-borns weren’t able to do higher level ancient magics, they simply didn’t have access to the same family magics pure and half-blood children did.

That day had been the first he had been able to make out the feel of his growing childs magic. It had excited him, but like always, his emotions were blunted. Ever since he had created his first Horcrux his emotions had dimmed, but he hadn’t minded, it was the cost of immortality.

Then the dream had started. He dreamt of a child in a loveless home, the images of this child were interspersed with images he knew came from his own time in the orphanage. He saw a dark cloaked man always trying to force the child to be more or different than it was, he also saw the memories of the nuns at his orphanage trying to force the ‘demon’ out of him. He saw as the child grew angry and resentful as it aged. And then, just before the dream ended he saw his memory of himself killing his father for never being there, and that was followed by his own child following in his footsteps and killing a failure of a father. The dream ended just as his child killed him.

Voldemort had sat up gasping for breath. Getting up he left his room in search of his dear familiar Nagini who had her own room just down from his. She grumbled at being woken, but she listened to his fears all the same, he seemed to be having a moment of clarity and she was pleased.

They talked until the early hours of the morning. Over the recent years he had listened to Nagini less and less and she gave him an earful about how he had changed. She told him of how he had been losing his mind and forgetting who he was and what he had been doing.

And he couldn’t deny it. Looking back at the plans he had when everything started to what he had been doing just the day previous he could see they had nothing in common. As a boy he had sworn if he ever had a child he would be a better man than his own father had, yet he had been planning on leaving the care of his child and heir to another.

As the sun was fully up he decided things needed to change, he needed to repair his soul if only so his own child didn’t kill him.

* * *

The process to repair a soul was long and gruelling, but he did it, he definitely didn’t mind the return of his sanity and looks that went along with it. And not a moment too soon.

After he returned from the rituals he had needed to conduct he realized just how stupid his latest plans were. He had been planning on attacking known members of Dumbledores little Order at their own home.

His target had been Lord Bones and his wife. The issue was first, he was a Lord and thus powerful in their government and getting rid of him could cause an untold number of issues, second, he and his sister were both high ranked members of the DMLE so they were very good fighters, third, the attack was planned for their home so they would have home turf advantage, fourth, they would undoubtably call for backup from their fellow Order members which just meant more people, and fifth, he believed he had heard a rumour they were expecting prior to the planned attack and he didn’t want to kill or orphan another child. And those were only the obvious issues. In all, the plan was just stupid.

He decided to call it off in its entirety. And while he was at it he started to go through all the plans his followers had and sort through those to determine if any of them were useful in any way. He also went over his followers to see if they really deserved to bear his mark.

Effectively, Voldemort paused the war in its entirety.


	2. Prophecies and Spies

On January 9th, 1980, under the darkness of a new moon Lord Voldemort became a father. Blaise Angelus Zabini-Riddle was born.

Tom was thrilled. Since his soul had been repaired he had found himself becoming more and more interested in becoming a father. He was going to do whatever it took to give his son the best life possible.

But as Tom was over the moon looking down at his newborn son Francesca was furious. She had wanted a girl. She hated men, and now she had had to suffer through 16 hours of labour only to get a boy, to her, he simply wasn't worth it.

* * *

It was only a week after the birth of their son that Francesca decided to leave. She needed a new plan to take her proper position in her family since she had no use for her son.

In the magical world divorce was extremely complicated which was why it was so rarely done. When a couple married their magic literally twined around each other and separating it could be both difficult and painful. It was even more complicated when a child was involved because the parents magic would have wrapped around the child. Separating the magic could permanently damage the bond between parent and child if not break it out right.

Francesca knew the risks, but she just didn’t care. If separating from the Dark Lord broke the parental bond between herself and the boy all the better for her. She filed for divorce and left the country to recover from the trauma of child birth.

Tom accepted Francesca’s decision, he honestly preferred her not being in their sons life. The only issue he had with her was that when the divorce was recognized by magic it hurt Blaise when the connection between him and his mother fully broke leaving him with the sensation that his mother had died.

His poor innocent child, not even a week old, cried unconsolably for days before the broken bond effectively ‘scabbed over’ enough for the pain to cease. During that time Tom had had to allow one of his followers, Severus Snape, to learn of the existence of his son, although he had been sworn to secrecy and threatened with unending pain if he ever betrayed his Lord. The reason he had to tell Severus was because he was nearly done his potions mastery so he could brew the potions Blaise needed to ease his pain and help him recover from the broken bond as those potions needed to be personalized for him specifically. Unfortunately thanks to the stupidity of Dumbledore potions masters were nearly non-existent in Britain, Severus was the only one of his followers that were capable of brewing the needed potions and he didn’t trust any of the three other potions masters in the country, not even Severus’s own master.

Tom had truly wanted to kill Francesca for all the pain she had caused his son, but thanks to the healing of his soul was unfortunately more rational so he just let her leave. He wished he was still insane and could just take his revenge but he didn’t want to have to one day explain to his son he had killed his mother. He simply allowed her to leave so long as she understood she was to never come near his son again, not that she argued against that in the slightest. And for a little bit of petty revenge he wrote to her grandfather, who was still the Lord of her family, to explain about her filing for divorce and abandoning his great-grandson. Lord Zabini, like most pure-bloods, valued family above all and saw the abandonment of a child as a horrible crime so punished Francesca by cutting her off from the family fortune, closing out her family vault and transferring all the money the family had given to her to the son she had abandoned.

* * *

Once Tom had settled into his roll as a father he went back to the war. It had been months without any major attacks and it had helped people to relax, although Dumbledore and his little group of idiots were still going on about how evil he and his followers were.

Oh, it wasn't like he became warm and fuzzy, he just became more strategic in who died, when, and how. The indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and murder hadn’t helped his cause in the slightest.

Now that he had regained his sanity they had focus and direction. And any Death Eater that didn’t follow the new party line was removed. During his review of his followers there had been more than one or two that he had needed to deal with as they had used his cause as an excuse to commit atrocities that he had never supported even in the worst of his insane violence.

It was time this war take a more Slytherin feel, Morgana knew they had all had to deal with far to much Gryffindor.

* * *

It was when Blaise was six months old that Tom first learned of the prophecy. He had found it interesting, but he knew enough about divination to know prophecies could be incredibly difficult to interpret. Normally the first dozen interpretations were wrong and some could only be understood after it was fulfilled. But most of all, most prophecies were self fulfilling. If a child was to be born with the power to defeat him it didn’t mean they would have the inclination.

But Tom wasn't sure if he truly believed the prophecy was even real. Oh, he knew Severus had told him the truth, but he didn’t trust Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore loved to lord over others from his position as Headmaster, so why would the old man conduct a job interview in a notorious pub. More than that, the bad relationship between the Dumbledore brothers wasn't exactly a secret. So Albus being in that pub in particular was even more suspicious.

He was interested in the prophecy, but he would prefer to know the full thing before he made any decisions.

* * *

In the beginning of September Severus returned.

“What is it you want to discus?” Tom questioned in his Lord Voldemort tone. Since healing his soul he was much more human, but he kept up the stricter treatment with his followers. He couldn’t have them thinking he was going soft.

Severus kept his head bowed out of respect even as he was invited to sit across from his Lord in his office. He, like many others, had been greatly relieved when their Lord had seemed to have regained his sanity for some unknown reason. As he knew of their Lords son he believed it to have something to do with him and he would be eternally grateful to the child for saving their side even if he hadn’t even been born yet. He truly believed they now had a chance to win.

“I was wondering about what you intend to do about the prophecy.” Severus stated.

Tom leaned back in his seat slightly and examined the young man, in spite of his academic qualifications he was only 20 years old, and he seemed to have something on his mind. Severus might have a traditional Slytherin mask that actually was the result of strong occlumency, but Tom knew enough about his followers to see the nerves under it. “Currently I have no specific plans. What is this about Severus? What have you learned that has you worried?”

Severus tried raising his occlumency shield higher to hide his worry, he couldn’t believe he had let so much slip to his Lord. The man may have changed in the past year, but Severus still expected to be punished if he spoke out of turn. “There were two boys born that match the prophecy.”

His followers voice was barely above a whisper but Tom heard it, he just didn’t yet understand the mans worry. “And just who are these boys?”

“I don’t know much, just that two members of Dumbledore’s pathetic Order had male children at the end of July.” Severus really hoped that he didn’t accidentally cause his Lord to go after the children of his former friends, he wouldn’t be able to live with that pain. “Alice Longbottom gave birth on the 30th, and… Lily Potter on the 31st.”

Tom let that information sit for a moment while he quickly worked out why his follower was so worried. He had heard stories about the brilliant Slytherin boy who was best friends with a Gryffindor mud blood. His followers were worse gossips than little old ladies in a book club. He had also heard of the falling-out and the resulting despondent state the teenage boy had been in until a few of his housemates had pulled him out of it.

He was glad he was no longer insane enough to just go off killing blindly. He believed that if he had murdered Severus’s first friend the man would turn on him, and given that he knew of his son that would be a very bad thing. If Severus turned against him he could lose everything, the man may be young, but he was one of the most skilled Death Eaters he had.

“And you would wish me not to harm your first friend even if she turned her back on you years ago for a simple argument that happened in the heat of the moment?” Tom questioned.

Severus blinked in shock, he hadn’t thought his Lord would know such a small thing. It was true, after the argument with Lily he had apologized multiple times a day for weeks for insulting her, but she never accepted it. All it had taken was a single mistake for her to throw him away now that she was comfortable in the wizarding world and he couldn’t be of use to her anymore. Even if their friendship was gone and could never be fixed he still didn’t want to have to be responsible for her death. Plus Alice, Severus had been friendly with Alice because she was friends with Lily, and after the fight between him and Lily he had explained things to her and while she had sided with Lily she had never been anything but kind to him so he didn’t want her death on his conscience either.

“I would my Lord.” Severus said in a soft voice. “We may no longer be friends, but Lily was my first friend, for a long time she was all I truly had until you and your followers found me.”

Tom knew this. Severus had grown up similar to him yet different. His muggle father had abused him just as much as Tom had been at the orphanage. When Severus joined Tom had arranged for his father to be retrieved from the muggle prison he had been being held at for beating Severus’s mother to death when he had been 16. Severus had taken great joy in making the man pay for every insult and strike he had given him.

Tom let Severus sweat for a moment, but only a moment. “I have no intention of attacking anyone based on half a prophecy. I will wait until I get the whole thing before I make any decisions. As it is, I will not be going off to slaughter any children, or their parents. But you must understand, both childrens parents are members of that ridiculous Order the old fool believes is a secret. They have chosen to engage in this war and it may get them killed, if they are killed in battle it is their own fault.”

“I understand and fully agree my Lord.” Severus let out a slight breath of relief at the news he was not going to be indirectly the cause of his former friends murder. “I thank you for your consideration of my thoughts. They did indeed choose to engage in this war so any consequences they should suffer are their own fault.”

“Is there anything else Severus?” Tom questioned, seeing that his follower wasn't quite done.

Severus had come for two reasons, one was to protect his former friend, but now he knew his Lord wasn't going to run off to kill children he could speak of the second reason. “Yes my Lord. The reason I knew of the birth of the children was because the old fool himself informed me. He was much subtler than usual, but it is my belief that he wishes to recruit me as a spy believing that I would want to protect Lily. He, for some reason, has always held the belief that I was in love with her rather than just her friend.”

Tom smirked, oh this was good. “That is… beneficial. We have been trying to get someone close to him for years but he has never truly trusted any of our people.”

It was the truth. Dumbledore was surprisingly cagey when he wanted to be. The only ones he truly allowed into his Order were those he personally selected, and most of those were his favoured students that were blindly devoted to him. If Dumbledore wanted to recruit Severus then that would allow him a great deal of information directly from the old fool himself, but they were going to have to be extremely careful to ensure the man learned nothing they didn’t want him too.

“You will allow yourself to be recruited. Be hesitant and resistant at first, but use his belief in your affection for the girl. This does not mean you need to act like a lovesick fool, just let him believe it is out of loyalty.” Tom informed his follower.

“Yes my Lord.” Severus nodded, he didn’t want to have to deal with his former Headmaster, but he would for his Lord. “But what of what I am to tell him? He will want information. Attack plans, followers names, the structure of the organization.”

Tom knew the dangers, but it was worth it for the time, it would give them the edge they needed. “We will come up with a secrecy vow that I will bind to your mark. It will allow us to keep our secrets.”

As Tom thought about it he thought he just might need to apply the same kind of vows to all his followers. A few of his lower ranks had been arrested and caused a great deal of trouble by spilling everything they knew, which thankfully wasn't much of anything, in the hopes of getting a deal. If he worded a vow correctly and applied it to their marks they wouldn’t be able to name a single other Death Eater to anyone, let alone some Ministry idiot.

He was surprised at just how much easier things had become since regaining his sanity, although he did miss how easy it had been to just destroy anyone in his way, doing things strategically took far more patience.

* * *

Severus played hard to get for a few weeks before allowing Dumbledore to believe he had swayed him to the light. Dumbledore even told him that he was to tell the Dark Lord, although he said Voldemort, that Severus was spying on the Order for him. Severus thought it was amusing, Dumbledore thought Severus was his spy and had even offered to give him bits of information to feed back to the dark under the pretence of being their spy.

The thing that truly surprised Severus was that Dumbledore seemed so excited to have finally gotten a spy that he actually announced it to the inner circle of his Order. Severus was just relieved his Lord knew he wasn't spying on him because a few of the people in that room had no filter and he didn’t doubt it would get out eventually.

The main group of Order members included Dumbledore, naturally, and Minerva McGonagall from Hogwarts, Mad-Eye Moody, Frank Longbottom, James Potter, Sirius Black, Edgar Bones, Dorcaus Meadowes, and the Prewett twins from the auror office, Elphius Doge, Dedalus Diggle and Sturgis Podmore who were school friends of Dumbledore’s, Mundungus Fletcher who was a thief, Peter Pettigrew who worked in the department of transportation monitoring the floo network, and Remus Lupin who was unemployed. The group also extended to Lily and Alice but both were on maternity leave from work and at home with their new babies.

Those like Potter and Moody were absolutely apoplectic with the idea of him being included and Pettigrew kept giving him nasty looks. Surprisingly Black and Lupin didn’t join in with their fellow marauders and seemed to have taken a neutral approach. But as the first meeting he was in progressed he started to see why.

Black was known to com from a dark side family and it would seem that despite his rather public separation from them there were still certain members of the Order that didn’t trust him. Severus was honestly surprised at how they expected him to know all about Death Eaters when they knew the man had left his family years before, it was even odder they were asking him when he, an actual Death Eater, was in the room. Lupins position in the group was rather self explanatory, he was a dark creature, and thus, many didn’t trust him. From what he saw during the meeting they were perfectly willing to use him to support their cause, but they didn’t exactly like having him around. Some like Meadowes, Doge, and Moody were clearly very prejudice, he had actually seen Meadowes flinch and try to shuffle away when he walked past her.

It was obvious that although they were working towards a common goal there were plenty of cracks that he would be able to exploit. As the meeting progressed he was stunned to see just how useless the group trulywas. Most just took marching orders from Dumbledore, and the man was moving people about seemingly at random. Severus couldn’t see a real strategy in the plans he was making, mostly it just looked like he was trying to make his blind sheep feel important.

Regardless of any other factor Severus would be informing his Lord of everything, he might see a strategy where Severus did not.


	3. Potter Drama

The Potters had many secrets. One secret was that James Potter was, in fact, not Lord Potter.

Most believed that James’s father, Fleamont, and his mother, Euphemia, had died shortly after James graduated from Hogwarts. And James actively encouraged that belief. The truth was that the two elderly people had simply retired from public society as they had no interest in fighting in a war, they didn’t agree with Voldemort but they also didn’t particularly like Albus Dumbledore.

James was the family Heir and was able to sit in the Potter seat in the Wizengamot as he had his father’s permission. But most of the time he just proxied his seat to the Headmaster, he hated having to sit in sessions that could last hours and were as boring as it was possible to be. James really had no patience for the intricacies and formalities of politics.

But the biggest secret was the newest members of the family. A few weeks before Lily went into labour a prophecy was made that a child born at the end of July would save them all from You-Know-Who. The Headmaster had warned them and the Longbottom family since both were expecting.

When Lily had gone into labour in the early afternoon of July 31st she and James had both known that their child would be the child the prophecy spoke about, they just didn’t know which one.

The thing was, during one of their healer appointments they were told they were expecting twins. After plenty of discussions they agreed on names. If they had twin boys their names would be Evan Fleamont Potter for the first born and Harry James Potter for the second. If they had two girls their names would be Rose Euphemia Potter for the first born and Violet Lily Potter for the second. And if they had one of each they would be Evan and Rose.

They had twin boys. But it was easy to tell just which one of them was the special one. The boys had been born at 11:58 July 31st and 12:03 August 1st.

Under the watchful eyes of James’s parents, Sirius and Remus, Peter had been on a mission for the Order at the time, the great Albus Dumbledore, and the healers who had been involved in their birth they gave the boys their names and chose their godparents. Alice and Headmaster Dumbledore would be Evan’s godparents, while Sirius and Remus would be Harry’s.

* * *

It didn’t take long though before cracks started to show in the little family.

Lily and James had been excited that Evan was going to be a hero. The Headmaster had already told them all about the fame they would get once Evan saved them all. He talked about book deals and publicity events, how the Ministry would no doubt hold balls in their honour, they may even create a holiday named after little Evan Potter once he fulfilled the prophecy.

Lily and James were already making so many plans that they often forgot that they had two boys and not just the one that was going to make them famous. Oh, they still looked after little Harry, it just wasn't the same way they doted on Evan.

By the time the boys were almost three months old the family was in hiding at a little house owned by Albus Dumbledore in Godric’s Hollow. The house was nothing like James was used to since he had grown up at Potter Manor. And although it was a perfectly nice home it wasn't they type of home James wanted, especially since Lily was uncomfortable using house elves so they didn’t have any. It was hard for the two of them.

James and Lily both swore they wouldn’t have any time with each other if it weren’t for the fact that Sirius visited often and Remus would come by anytime he wasn't out on Order missions. As it was James and Lily already were feeling they just weren’t getting enough time with each other and Evan, who needed a great deal of attention due to his great destiny.

And it was with that thought that the two parents sat down to talk with Headmaster Dumbledore on an early Halloween morning. Lily and James told him all about how worried they were that Evan wasn't getting the kind of attention he needed because they had so much else to do and he agreed with them whole heartedly.

The Headmaster had actually come about the same thing. He felt that Evan was just to important to have to share the attention. He also told them that unfortunately Harry would most likely grow up to resent his elder brother because of how famous he was and that it just might be best to separate the twins, at least until they started Hogwarts.

He felt it would allow James and Lily to be there for Evan and Harry would be able to grow up away from all the fame. Once it was time for the boys to go to school they could collect Harry and reintegrate him into the family since he would hopefully be old enough to understand just how special his brother was.

Lily and James thought about it for a few minutes and then they agreed. Lily said that the last time she had spoken with her parents she thought her mum had said something about Petunia wanting a baby boy, honestly she hadn’t been paying much attention, she had to go into the muggle village and use a payphone to contact her parents and she didn’t like having to do that so usually tried to get off the phone quickly.

They all thought it would be a good idea to send Harry to Petunia and her husband that very morning. Lily quickly dashed off a note to Petunia telling her she needed her to look after Harry until he was 11 and then she and James would come and get him. She gave a basic outline of how Evan was going to be famous so Harry was betta off growing up away from the fame and with someone that would have enough time to look after a normal wizard so he didn’t get jealous of how special his brother was.

Once that was done the Headmaster made a portkey to Petunia’s house and they sent Harry off.

* * *

When Sirius and Remus had agreed to become Harry’s godfathers they had gone with a magical bond. That meant whenever Harry was truly upset, sick, or hurt they would feel him pulling on the bond for comfort. It was often how they knew when James and Lily forgot to feed him when they were too focused on Evan.

Because of that they felt the incredibly strong tugs that Harry did when the portkey went off. He was only three months and he had just been sent across the country by portkey, on his own, and had no one comfort him when he suddenly dropped on the Dursley’s kitchen table causing the people there to scream and a bowl of hot porridge to get dumped on him.

Sirius and Remus had instantly stopped what they were doing and went to see James and Lily since they were worried they had been attacked. When James and Lily told them what they had done and why both had been absolutely disgusted with them, and told them so, although Remus breaking James’s nose sort of made their point too. They had known that James and Lily didn’t seem to be up to looking after Harry properly, but they never thought it would go so far as them abandoning him.

The two men left after getting sick of James and Lily acting like what they had done was fine and that it really was better that way. The first place they went was to the Potter Cottage where Fleamont and Euphemia had moved.

The two elderly Potters were devastated to know what their son had done to one of their grandsons. Euphemia in particular was heartbroken, children had meant so much to her after all the difficulty they had had having James, so knowing how little one of his children had meant to him made her feel like a failure.

Fleamont instantly began planning. It was easy enough to say that Fleamont was the most Slytherin-like Gryffindor the Potters had ever had. He was not about to allow what his son and his wife had just done stand.

Once Fleamont had come up with a plan he left his wife with his honorary son, Sirius, and his mate, Remus.

* * *

As the true Lord Potter and Head of the Potter Family Fleamont used the family magics to guide him to his abandoned grandson.

He was absolutely disgusted at what he found.

In the plain boring house he found a thin horse like woman, an obese muggle that looked like a beached whale, and a pudgy infant. The young family had just been sitting down to lunch. Something that disgusted him was that the child, who only looked a month or so older than his grandsons was drinking a bottle of chocolate milk, something he knew couldn’t be healthy for one so young.

But he didn’t see Harry. He quickly explained that he was Harry’s grandfather and had come to collect him after hearing his son and daughter-in-law had abandoned him with them. This had resulted in a diatribe from the horse woman about freaks disturbing her perfectly normal life. Fleamont let her rant for a few moments, knowing more and more that this was the last place he would ever allow his grandson to live, before he cut her off and pointed out the sooner she handed over his grandson the sooner they would be gone.

The woman had stormed into the hall and yanked open the little door under the stairs. At that Fleamont was ready to kill. They had put a three month old under the stairs like he was a pair of old boots?

The woman grabbed the boy and shoved him into Fleamont’s arms. Fleamont chose to focus on soothing his whimpering grandson rather than cursing this woman in a way she deserved.

Instead he just turned and walked out the front door. Once he was out however he may have cast a suspicion ward on the front door. When the adults next walked through it would attach to them. The ward would just make people suspicious and weary of them, making them feel slightly paranoid and persecuted. It would only last a few months, but it would make them uncomfortable without hurting them or risking their sons wellbeing.

* * *

Back at the Potter Cottage everyone was upset at the state of Harry.

They saw the patch of dried porridge on his onesie, when they took it off to get him into something clean they found that not only was it sticking to his skin since it hadn’t been cleaned up, but the babies delicate skin it was sticking to was red and burned. There were also finger print bruises on his left arm and when Remus ran a health scan he found straining to the tendons in his shoulder.

Fleamont left his wife and the other two to heal his grandson. He needed to make sure his grandson was protected, from everyone, even his own parents unfortunately.

* * *

The first place Fleamont went was to the Ministry to speak with an old friend of his. He needed his assistance to find a way to protect Harry and his friend could help with that.

From there he flooed over to Ravens Court, the large manor where Lord Black lived. Lord Arcturus Black had been a year behind him in school. The two had never been overly close at school, but they had known each other since Fleamont was head boy while Arcturus was a prefect. They got to know each other much better years later when Arcturus’s grandson, Sirius, had run away to Fleamont’s home. Fleamont had contacted Arcturus to inform him of the treatment Sirius had received from his son, Orion, and his wife, Walburga. The two had reached an agreement to allow Sirius to remain with Fleamont and Euphemia while Arcturus and his wife Melania took custody of Sirius’s younger brother Regulus.

That day Arcturus had sworn Fleamont a debt, and now he was ready to call it in.

“What is it I can do for you Fleamont?” Arcturus questioned in slight trepidation. Even if it was something horrible he wasn’t overly worried anyway, he knew he was on his way out, not that he regretted that fact. Only the year before his wife of over 70 years had passed peacefully in her sleep, and he missed her terribly and wanted to be with her again, the only thing that had kept him going was making the final arrangements for his Heir to ensure the Black name would continue.

“Many years ago the House of Potter offered sanctuary to your grandson, now I request the House of Black do the same for my grandson.” Fleamont sat down across from the man.

Arcturus called for one of his elves to bring them both a glass of scotch. It seemed like this was going to be a conversation that would need a stiff drink. And if anyone were around to comment that it was early afternoon theycould just shrug it off as they were both old men who could do as they wished.

“What exactly do you need?” Arcturus asked. “I’v heard rumours that your son and his wife had a son a few months ago, but they are in hiding since they claim they are being targeted.”

Fleamont sighed, even he didn’t have the full picture. “I don’t know all about that… All I know is that there was some kind of prophecy and that Tom is targeting them and the Longbottom’s, apparently the focus is on their children. I honestly don’t fully believe it. You would have to be a fool not to notice the change in the war… It seems like Tom has regained his sanity.”

Arcturus nodded his agreement, he knew that his youngest grandson Regulus, and his cousins granddaughter Bellatrix were both marked and Reg had mentioned the changes. “I have heard stories. He seems to have changed his tactics and it is working much better. I doubt that he would target a child now, no one in our world would ever accept the blatant murder of a child. Even at the worst of his insanity he has never been shown to blatantly target a child, there are only accusations of that, no evidence.”

“I am aware.” Fleamont sighed. He knew all about those accusations since his son had the unfortunate habit of repeating all the nonsense that Albus Dumbledore spewed. He honestly didn’t know where James had gotten the idea that Albus Dumbledore knew everything, neither he or his wife had ever been fond of the man and he knew it. “But that is neither here nor there at the moment.

According to what little information I have gotten from my son there is a prophecy that states a boy born at the end of July would have the power to defeat Tom, and they believe it to be either the Longbottom boy or my grandson.”

“And you what? Wish me to assist you in hiding the boy?” Arcturus questioned. He knew that Fleamont knew that he supported the dark, even more so now that Tom seemed to be going in the right direction.

“No, I do believe Evan is perfectly safe with his parents. What no one knows is that Lily gave birth to twin boys. Evan, just before midnight July 31st, and Harry just after midnight August 1st. Albus has convinced James and Lily that it is Evan the prophecy speaks of. And too that end, he has also convinced them that Evan will need all their attention and that Harry will just get in the way. It is for that reason they decided it would be a good idea to abandon him with magic hating muggles.”

“THEY DID WHAT!” Arcturus roared. “How dare they? How dare they abandon a magical child to muggles? What are you doing here, we must go get him.”

Fleamont chuckled seeing Arcturus jumping from his chair and looking around for his travel cloak. “Peace, Arcturus, peace. I have already collected him. Harry is currently back at my home under the watchful eye of my wife and his godfathers, one of whom is Sirius.”

Arcturus let out a relieved sigh, he had no love of muggles, he had seen far to many children harmed by those that feared magic to ever think leaving a magical child with a muggle was a good idea. “So how do you think I can help you protect him?”

“As much as I hate to admit it, James and Lily simply aren’t up to caring for both boys, but Euphemia and I are simply too old to look after a baby.” Fleamont said. “I wish for you to give your permission for Sirius to adopt him into the Black family. As the Black’s are an older family than the Potter’s you and Sirius would have more say in his life. I love my son in spite of all his faults, but I just don’t feel he is capable of putting Harry’s needs and future above his own wants.”

Arcturus sat back in his seat to think. He wasn't opposed to allowing Sirius to accept the boy into his family. He knew it would surprise all those light side idiots that followed Dumbledore blindly, but most of the older dark families didn’t hate muggle-borns or halfbloods, what they hated was the loss of their culture many of the more narrow-minded ones represented. Sirius might not be the most traditional of wizards, but he knew the traditions and Arcturus trusted he would raise the boy correctly.

The reason he hesitated was because all decisions about a family needed to be treated with the utmost care. Especially since Sirius was from the main line, if he had been from a secondary line it would be a simple yes, but he wasn’t. When Sirius had gone to live with the Potter’s Arcturus had made a few quick changes to accommodate him, in a few families the Heir of the family couldn’t live with any other family unless there was no one of their birth family left. By that point in time Sirius’s father, Orion, had already proven himself unworthy of the Heirship, so it had passed on to Sirius. To allow Sirius to remain with the Potter’s he had had to transfer the Heirship over to Regulus, Sirius’s younger brother. And although Regulus was the Black Heir he was also only 17, wasn't married, had no children, and had the dark mark. If anything happened to Regulus the heirship would return to Sirius now that he was an adult and thus had the right to choose where he lived.

Giving it a few minutes of contemplation Arcturus could see no negatives to accepting the child. If anything it would be beneficial since he would be repaying the debt he owed Fleamont. It wasn't like the boy would be the first person adopted into the family, not that many knew about those little family secrets.

Making his decision Arcturus agreed to Fleamonts request and they agreed to meet at Gringotts the next day. But Arcturus knew there was something that would need to be addressed.

“You are aware of my politics. And I know you know I will not remain Lord Black for much longer… Are you really willing to give my grandson that much control over yours?”

Fleamont nodded. “While I might not have the same ideology you and Regulus have, I am fully aware of your stances on family. When Sirius adopts Harry he will be a member of the Black family and I know neither of you would act against the best interests of a member of your family. If there is one think the dark side of this war holds dear that I fully agree with it is their devotion to children. No one on the dark side would have done what my own son has done this day, and if they did they would be torn apart.

I trust that Regulus will do what is best for my grandson once he is Lord Black, just as I trust you now.”

After leaving the Black estate Fleamont quickly stopped by Gringotts to make arrangements to meet with his account manager as well as rent one of their ritual rooms the next day. Once he was home he sent out a letter ordering his son and his wife to be at the meting the next day.

With that done he went to spend the evening with his wife, honorary sons, and grandson.

* * *

The next day all the Potter’s, and honorary Potter’s, met in a private meeting room in Gringotts.

“Why do you have Harry?” Lily demanded as soon as she saw the infant in her mother-in-laws arms.

Euphemia just raised an eyebrow at her daughter-in-law. When her son had first introduced them to Lily she had been happy at seeing just how happy he was so had of course approved of the match. Now, not so much. Although she was disappointed in her son she was furious with the other woman, what kind of woman just abandoned her child because she didn’t deem him important enough?

“Harry is why we are here.” Fleamont said in a disappointed voice. “It was brought to my attention that the two of you have acknowledged you are not capable of loving your children so decided to abandon one of them.”

“We are perfectly capable parents.” James said defensively. “Evan is just too important, he’s going to be famous. The Headmaster agreed so we decided Harry was better off away from Evan’s fame so he wouldn’t become jealous. Once he starts Hogwarts we will be able to bring him home since he will be old enough to understand.”

“Yeah, old enough to understand you two were fame hungry and threw him away.” Sirius muttered in disgust.

Fleamont cleared his throat and gave Sirius a look, he didn’t need the boys fighting. “Regardless of Albus Dumbledore’s opinion he is not a member of this family and has no right to interfere. As it is I feel I have no choice but to agree that Harry is better off away from the two of you. Not because of some fame you both so clearly desire Evan to have, but because growing up with parents that are incapable of treating the boys equally and loving a child regardless of any and all factors is not a healthy environment.”

“We sent Harry to live with my sister.” Lily said as she snuggled Evan closer to her chest when he started to wake. “My mum had been saying Petunia had been wanting a son. He was perfectly safe with her and you had no right to take him away. I know the two of you might like to raise him but we felt, and I mean no offence by this, but the two of you are too old to be able to keep up with a growing child. He will have a perfectly fine life with my sister.” Lily had been coming up with all kinds of reasons they had done the right thing.

Fleamont just stared for a moment, how could this girl be so self-centred and he had never realized. “No, to all of that. Your mother wasn't telling you your sister wanted a son, she has a son, your nephew. The boy looks to be a few weeks older than the twins. As to this delusion you have created that your sister would be perfectly happy to raise the magical son that you abandoned, no… just no.

I arrived at the house only a few hours after you had abandoned him and he already had bruises and injuries and those disgusting things you are related too had just put him in a boot cupboard. Something you should have expected given you have never made it a secret that your sister hates magic. What kind of person thinks it is a good ida to leave a magical child with a known magic hater?

As to the idea that I had no right to remove him, no. I had every right. Despite what you and James might like to pretend **I** am the head of this family. And, abandoning a child for a decade is not going to make them like you. If I had just left him there to be abused for a decade and then you went to collect him under the delusion that he would just accept your neglect you would deserve every insult and curse thrown at you.”

“So what?” James questioned. “Are you ordering us to take Harry home?”

“Oh good Merlin no.” Fleamont looked at his son like he was crazy. “You both have already shown you do not have Harry’s best interest at heart. The reason we are here is because the goblins can be trusted to keep the legal documents we will all be signing private.

The two of you will be signing away all legal right to Harry. As no on outside our immediate family, and Albus, knows you had twins we will be able to cover up your failings. As far as anyone will know you two only ever had one child. The wards around this room will ensure no one here betrays this secret so long as I am alive. The reason Sirius and Remus are here is because Lily was correct in one thing, Euphemia and I are too old to be racing a child. Sirius, Remus, Euphemia and I are requesting the two of you to adopt Harry as your own.”

Sirius and Remus gaped for a few seconds before happily agreeing. They already loved their godson as if he was their own so making it legal was no hardship.

“You can’t do that.” Lily gasped in shock. She might not have the time to raise Harry but she didn’t want to have him taken from her.

“Yes, I can, and am.” Fleamont said. “Regardless of your opinion I will not be leaving Harry under your control in any way. You have made your opinion of caring for both boys perfectly clear, and you will not be able to undo that. There is a magical bond that exists between magical parents and their children. When you two willingly abandoned him you permanently damaged the bond between you and Harry. Nothing you do will ever repair it. Harry will never be able to see you as his parents, just as you will never fully see him as your son. You are still related, but you are no longer magically parent and child.

You can either finish what you started and fully give him up, or we will be going through the Ministry. And that means it will more than likely be made public knowledge given just how leaky the Ministry is.”

“And what can the Ministry do?” Lily demanded in irritation. She might work at the Ministry, but she had never bothered to learn all the old laws and policies that were used by the purebloods.

“If I were to file to remove custody of Harry from you, using your abandonment of him as evidence, the Ministry would declare you unfit parents. The only way they wouldn’t would be through blatant corruption. Abandoning a child the way you did is classed as child endangerment in our world. And because you would be found guilty of child endangerment you would face between 6 months to a year in Azkaban. Also, you would be stripped of custody of Evan. As you had harmed one of the twins you would not be seen as a capable parent so even once you both got out of Azkaban you would never be able to retain custody of either boy, even more, any other children you had would be monitored and if there was even a hint of impropriety they would be taken from you as well.

So really you only have two choices, you either willingly give up Harry, or you lose both boys.” Fleamont told them bluntly. He could see the outrage on the womans face and the way she held on to Evan even tighter, but he had no sympathy for her, it was her own actions that had brought this upon her.

“Fine.” James said quickly. He knew his wife had a temper that matched her red hair and didn’t want to risk going to Azkaban just because they did the right thing. The Headmaster even said it was the right thing. “We’ll sign the papers.”

“Wonderful.” Fleamont had his account manager hand the papers over and give the two a blood quill. Once the papers were signed, Lily getting upset about the quill, Fleamont smiled. “As of now James and Lily Potter only have one son, Evan Potter. Harry Potter is no longer your child and you will never be able to claim him as such again. Once Sirius and Remus sign their own paperwork he will be their child. The three of you are free to return to where ever it is you are hiding these days.”

Sirius waited until James and Lily had stormed out with Evan before he spoke. “There is more to adopting than just signing a few papers, and you know it Uncle Monty.”

Fleamont smiled. “I know. But James and Lily clearly don’t. What I am asking you for is more than just claiming Harry. Euphemia and I were hoping the two of you would blood adopt him and take him out of the country and away from this war.”

“We can’t just blood adopt him, you know that.” Sirius said quickly. “Blood rituals are banned in Britain. Plus, I would need permission from my grandfather to bring Harry into the Black family.”

“And you have it.” Arcturus said as he walked into the office using his walking stick for support. “Fleamont came to me yesterday. And as to the banning of blood rituals, that may be true in Britain due to peoples blind stupidity, but we are not in Britain. The goblin nation is just that, a nation. We are on goblin land, thus, blood rituals are legal.”

Sirius was on edge, he had long ago lost faith in every member of the Black family. When he had been a boy he had idolized his grandfather, but as the abuse from his parents got worse he lost trust in the man. It was why he had run away to the Potter’s. The only thing about his grandfather he was grateful for was that after he left his grandparents had stepped in and taken custody of his younger brother.

“Monty, I don’t know if I can go through with this.” Sirius said sadly. “If we blood adopt Harry he would be a member of the Black family. I don’t know if that’s the best idea.”

“Sirius…” Fleamont smiled at the boy he loved like he was his own. “Do you really think so little of your grandfather? Do you really think he was not involved in any way in your life after you came to us?”

“But…” Sirius was confused.

“I went to him only a few hours after you arrived.” Fleamont told him gently. “Your school tuition as well as all your supplies were always covered by your grandparents. It’s also why your grandparents took custody of your brother.”

“If you had just come to us when the abuse began you never would have had to live through all that.” Arcturus added.

“They only did to me what you would.” Sirius defended.

Arcturus gave his grandson a look. “They lied. I never raised a wand or hand to your father. Your mother was the victim of abuse as a young child but as soon as it was discovered it was stopped, and it was never to the extent of what she subjected you too.”

“Then why…?” Sirius was confused. He had always seen his family as evil, but now it seemed like it was only certain members.

“After Fleamont came to me I used the family magics to force them to tell me the truth. By the time you were born your father had already shown himself undeserving of the family heirship so I named you Heir when you were born. From what they said they planned to indoctrinate you to their way of thinking so once you became Lord you would either give the title to your parents or just do whatever they wanted. But you were always particularly stubborn and refused to give in to them so they just tried to break you down more.

Your grandmother and I discussed it and decided to punish them using old family magics. They have been under house arrest since that day and their magic is bound so they can not cast a single offensive spell. And, as you know, your grandmother and I took your brother so they couldn’t do to him what they had done to you.” Arcturus said.

“But you stripped me of the heirship when I left.” Sirius said in confusion. “If you agreed with me leaving why would you do that?”

“First, because you had always made it perfectly clear you had no desire to ever be Lord Black.” Arcturus chuckled as he remembered some of his grandsons antics to show his dislike of his position at family meetings. “But more than that it was because you were better off with Fleamont and Euphemia. The Black family charter dictates that if Heir Black is under age they are required to live with a blood member of the Black family. Your grandmother and I would have happily taken you along with your brother but agreed with Fleamont after everything that had happened you would be happier remaining with them. For you to stay with the Potter’s I had to make your brother the Heir.”

“I… Yeah.” Sirius nodded his agreement, shocked with everything he was learning. He hadn’t cared in the slightest about the position as the families Heir, he actually preferred not to be Heir since there were all kinds of expectations and pressure on them. But most of all he was thrilled his grandparents had cared enough to let him be happy, even if it meant he got to hate them in peace for a time.

“All of this is well and good, but not why we are all gathered here.” Fleamont broke in. “Sirius, I know you have your misgivings about your family, but I don’t. When Euphemia and I pass, if you only legally adopt Harry, James and Lily will be able to control many aspects of his life as head of family. But if you blood adopt him the Black family will be in the higher position and therefore be able to protect him. I know you and your grandfather, and younger brother, might have different political ideals, but I trust them to do right by your son more than I trust James unfortunately.”

Sirius and Remus exchanged looks and knew they both were in agreement, they were adopting Harry.

* * *

The ritual to blood adopt Harry was rather straight forward. Sirius and Remus would add three drops of blood to a potion each, they would then go and stand in the centre of a ritual circle while Harry drank the potion. Once that was done his new name, granted to him by magic, would appear above him. If they didn’t like the name they would just need to change it with the goblins. Then the goblins would magically file the paperwork and the Ministry copies would be updated without them ever needing to tell anyone they had done anything.

“I can’t add my blood.” Remus argued once they were in the ritual chamber.

“Why?” Fleamont questioned in confusion, he knew how much Harry meant to him.

“Because I’m a werewolf.” Remus pointed out like Fleamont was crazy. “I don’t want to subject Harry to the curse.”

Fleamont and Arcturus shared a confused look before Arcturus spoke. “Did you never learn anything about what it meant to be a wolf?”

“What do you mean?” Remus questioned.

“Lycanthropy can only be transferred through the bite of a transformed were.” Fleamont explained. “It is only under a full moon you are contagious. And the curse isn’t carried in the blood, but the saliva. Adding your blood will not change Harry, at most Harry’s senses will just be stronger like yours. The only way a child of a were is a were is if they are both conceived and born under the light of a full moon. Other than that they would need to be bitten.”

“How do you know all that?” Sirius questioned, they had been researching Remus’s status for years but had found little to nothing.

“Creature studies.” Arcturus shrugged. “It was one of the classes offered at Hogwarts while we attended. I believe it was canceled just before your parents attended. Werewolves are a subspecies of wolfbloods, and only wolfbloods can have wolf children outside of the parameters Fleamont stated. Lycanthropy itself isn’t a curse, it is simply a creature inheritance. It only seems like a curse if it isn’t handled correctly. After this I would recommend you get in contact with the were council and get the information about how to properly handle your condition, it would make your life much easier I would assume.”

“I thought you would have already known all this Remus, or I swear we would have told you.” Euphemia assured. “Your father at least had to have known given he specifically worked on werewolf issues during his time with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.”

Remus just made a mental note to look into it. He couldn’t figure out why his parents had never gotten into contact with this council if they could have helped him. It was also startling to know that all this information had been out there but had been removed from the school, making it that much harder for him to function.

Fleamont, Euphemia, and Arcturus oversaw the ritual with pride. Once the magic settled they all moved forward to get a good look at Harry to see if anything had changed. And plenty had.

Harry’s messy brown hair he got from his fathers family was now a silky midnight black with the slight waves that was common in the Black family. His skin tone had lightened a few shades from the golden colour he had inherited from Euphemia’s father, Zayn Shafiq. But the most startling change was his eyes, Harry had inherited Lily’s bright kelly green eyes, now they were two different colours. His left eye looked a combination of his original green mixed with the silver predominant in the Black family, while his right eye was a mix of green and Remus’s blue making it teal and it also had flecks of amber in it. Other than that any changes weren’t really noticeable since he was still just a baby and his features weren’t overly prominent under the baby fat.

And just above his head golden letters spelled out his new name. Hadrian Sirius Lowell Black-Lupin-Potter.

Sirius and Remus both agreed they like the name magic had chosen for their son.

But it was Arcturus and Fleamont that understood what magic was truly saying. In pureblood customs hyphenated last names went from most powerful to least. The Black name, given its age and prominence naturally came first, but it was the last two names order that showed how magic felt. The Potter family was older and more prominent, but magic had chosen to place it after the Lupin name, and that meant she deemed Remus Lupin was more important than James Potter in regards to Hadrian. It would seem even Lady Magic herself disapproved of James and Lily’s actions towards their child.

The group returned to the meeting room they had been in before and were joined by the Black manager since Hadrian was now a member of the Black family. Fleamont and Arcturus handled the arrangements while Euphemia watched over Sirius and Remus as they bonded with their new son.

“Fleamont.” Remus spoke up just as the final touches were being placed on the paperwork. “You said you wanted us to take Har… Hadrian out of the country and away from the war. I’m just wondering about that. I can leave given that I don’t have a job, I mean it might be slightly difficult given my finances, but Sirius has a job.” Remus went slightly pink as he spoke of his finances, or lack there of. He had inherited a small account from his parents, but not nearly enough to move internationally. He had lost his parents just the year before in a car accident.

“I spoke with an old friend of mine yesterday.” Fleamont said as he signed off on altering Hadrian’s trust fund. “Lucian Proudmore has decided to retire from his position as Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation. His wife has been wanting to travel more so he agreed to setting up a team to oversee and update the security for Britain’s embassies around the world.

The team is going to be made up of a few warders, curse breakers, and a few aurors. As Sirius is a junior member of the auror office I convinced him to add him to the team. So, Sirius, come Monday morning you will be receiving an offer to join the team. If you accept it you will still be classed as an auror but it will allow you, and your immediate family, to travel the world while you are working on the security of our embassies. The added benefit is that you will have diplomatic immunity so Remus can’t be touched by any bigoted laws.”

“That sounds amazing.” Sirius smiled, he loved the idea of ensuring Remus was protected. In truth, Sirius was thrilled to be given the chance to leave the country, he had been disillusioned over the past few years by the bigotry of his home country. Light or dark, both were bigoted.

* * *

Sirius did receive the job offer to work on embassy security and instantly accepted it, the job was set to start in three weeks. He and Remus discussed it and decided to not tell anyone they were leaving until just before they left. Albus and the Order might treat them with suspicion and in some cases disgust, but they would never willingly let them go since Remus was their only contact with the dark creatures.

On the day before their departure there was an Order meeting and they decided to announce it. Those in the aurors had already known Sirius was being reassigned, they just didn’t know it was out of the country.

Over the previous weeks both the Prewett twins, Frank, and Edgar had approached Sirius to ask what was going on between him and James since Sirius had requested a change of partner and absolutely refused to speak with the man. Because of the wards on the bank meeting room Sirius couldn’t give specifics, but he could give basic information. Whenever anyone asked he just said that James and Lily, on the advice of Dumbledore, had made a selfish decision and an innocent person got hurt. He went on to say that when they were confronted with the harm they had done James and Lily refused to accept that what they had done had been wrong and only cared that they got what they wanted, regardless of anyone being harmed.

When the two announced their departure it went just like how they had expected. Everyone acted like it was a huge betrayal and they were joining Voldemort.

Sirius just shut them up by demanding why they should stay given how they had been treated by them. Why should Sirius continue to provide information when they were suspicious of every word he said and treated him like he was evil just because he was born into a dark family? Why should Remus continue to risk his life when they treated him the way they did? What had any of them ever done to deserve their loyalty?

Remus pointed out their own hypocrisy. He pointed out how they claimed they wanted to help the creature population and then pointed out all the laws they had supported or voted for that restricted the rights of those very creatures. He pointed out how they claimed to want more equality but never did anything to help that equality, and in some cases acted against it. For that he used a recent workers rights law they had petitioned and voted against that would have given muggle-borns the rights to file charges for discrimination against a potential employer if they are denied the right to work based on their blood status.

Then they went after Dumbledore. He claimed the Death Eaters were criminals because they got information from the ministry and then gave it to their Lord, but Albus was also getting information he had no legal right to. They pointed out how Severus had given them a list of seventh year students Voldemort was planning to recruit and rather than showing those children there was other options Albus and Minerva just agreed they would watch them more closely at school and punish them harsher. Remus asked how they could claim they cared for children when they refused to help so many of them just because they were born into dark families?

And Sirius closed out their little parting speech by pointing out some of the crimes they were guilty of. In particular he made sure to mention the case of Elijah Lowe. Edgar Bones had conducted a raid on the mans home a few weeks earlier. They had found a few dark artifacts and had pressed charges. However, when the case had gone before the Wizengamot Lowe’s barrister had been able to prove the items had been planted and didn’t belong to his client, he also showed the warrant Edgar had used hadn’t been legal. The case had been thrown out and Edgar had been given 6 months probation. Sirius was happy to inform him that Albus had been the one to have the items planted using Mundungus Fletcher and it had been Mad-Eye, once again on Albus’s order, that had falsified the search warrant before giving it to him. Edgar had been absolutely furious at that information since it could have cost him his job. Frank and the Prewett twins joined him in their rage since it could have been anyone Mad-Eye gave that warrant too, plus they didn’t know if he hadn’t done the same to them and it just hadn’t been caught yet.

Sirius and Remus exchanged a happy little smirk before flooing to Sirius’s flat, closing it down, apparating to Remus’s, closing it down, and then using a portkey to go to the Potter Cottage. They had been staying at the Potter Cottage so there would always be someone there for Hadrian, plus it made it harder for the to be tracked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lowell mean little wolf or wolf cub depending on language or origin.


	4. Shake Up

The second year after the birth of his son Voldemort found things were becoming much easier. With the change in his strategy much of the public had started to relax. There were still many that were afraid, but that fear had lessened over time.

The public had even started to agree with his actions a bit more due to what had been done just before the previous Yule. Severus had recommended that he give people a reason he was so opposed to muggles after the old fool had started having articles written that were full of lies and portrayed muggles as kind and harmless in an effort to get rid of more of their holidays and weaken the Statute of Secrecy.

To do this Voldemort had arranged the raid of the home of a muggle-born. The parents were taken to the front steps of Gringotts in the middle of the holiday shopping and tied to posts. Voldemort had arranged for wards around the alley to keep people contained so no one could run. However, since it was about making him seem like the good guy he had his people go through and anyone there with children were given a choice, one parent was allowed to take the children to the Leaky Cauldron where a free lunch would be provided, but they had to decide which one. In most cases the mothers and children were quickly sent to get their lunches.

Once all the children were away the Death Eaters collected a muggle safe truth serum from the apothecary, making sure to pay for it, and then they administered it to the two muggles. Voldemort had specifically selected that pair as his information had shown they were extremely religious and were horribly abusive to their 13 year old daughter that was a Hufflepuff. Once the serum was in effect Voldemort, who was wearing his own mask to hide his true looks, started to question them on what they had done to their daughter.

Within half an hour the public was screaming for blood. If it weren’t for the wards that had been erected to keep the people away and stop any spells Voldemort knew those filthy muggles would have been ripped limb from limb by the people. Once the muggles confessions were finished they were handed over to the gathered aurors and Voldemort and his Death Eaters left after informing everyone that their daughter was receiving treatment at St. Mungo’s.

It gave the public the impression that all the raids that had been conducted on muggle homes were done with the intent to save children rather than just to kill. In some cases that was the truth, some, but not all. Truthfully some of it had just been for his insane selfs entertainment. But at the same time Dumbledore and his little fools accused them of conducting raids nearly every other day when really it was only one or two every few weeks.

With so much public attention to the danger of muggles the people started supporting the tightening of the statute rather than the weakening Dumbledore was supporting. Voldemort had also arranged for a few pieces to make it into the paper that questioned how such severe cases of abuse were going undetected by Hogwarts and its staff.

The only thing that was proving difficult was the Wizengamot. As it was the Wizengamot was in a deadlock between the dark and light factions making it very difficult to get things done. If it was just the dark and light factions then the dark would have had a one seat lead, but there was also the neutrals, and Dumbledore had a lot of dirt on a lot of people so they could be swayed. What he needed was for someone new to enter the scene and shake things up, and that person needed a lot of power, but he didn’t know of anyone like that.

* * *

Just a few weeks before the second year anniversary of the adoption of Hadrian, Arcturus passed peacefully in his sleep.

A few days later Regulus, who had just graduated from Hogwarts the year before, was meeting in his new office with his Lord. Voldemort still couldn’t believe he had been insane enough to mark Regulus and his two closest friends, Barty Crouch and Rabastan Lestrange, all three of whom had only been 16 at the time. He didn’t regret having them loyal to him, he just regretted involving children in the war. He swore the day he had restored his soul he would never again mark anyone underage.

They were discussing how Regulus would enter the Wizengamot and how he would behave when an elf arrived to announce Lord Potter was in the floo and requesting a meeting with Lord Black. This had confused both men but Regulus told the elf to allow the man through.

Voldemort got up and moved to a dark corner and made himself invisible. He wanted to know just what James Potter could want with Regulus. He thought it might have something to do with forcing his brother, Sirius Black, back into the country. Severus had been reporting how Dumbledores precious Order had been outraged with the man leaving the country. From what he heard there had been multiple attempts to get the man fired from the job he was currently doing and forcing him, and his werewolf mate, back so they could aid them in the war. Unfortunately for them the man was proving extremely competent according to his Ministry informants so their efforts had failed.

Regulus straightened up his desk and sat proudly, he needed to portray strength. James Potter was a bully, always had been, and like all bullies, he preferred to pick on those he saw as weaker. But it wasn't James Potter that walked into the office. This was a hunched old man with messy snow white hair and thick round glasses.

“Fleamont Potter?” Regulus gasped, all his training in decorum going right out the window in his shock. “But… You’re dead.”

Fleamont chuckled roughly. “Not yet I’m not.” Fleamont was just relieved that Regulus’s shock wasn't so bad he forgot to invite him to sit, his old bones couldn’t handle standing for a prolonged period of time anymore. Once seated Fleamont glanced towards the corner where he could feel a strong magical signature emanating. “Are you going to invite your other guest to join us?”

“Other guest?” Regulus questioned. Honestly, Fleamont had to agree he was managing to keep his face rather blank, but he had raised a son that loved pranks and nearly never told the truth so he was able to spot all the little tells even the best liars had.

“One skill that all of the best potions masters have is magic sensitivity. It is a requirement so we know if there is anyone around while we’re brewing so we aren’t startled as well as can tell if there’s an issue with the potion. There is a rather strong magical signature emanating from the back corner.”

Voldemort was surprised at just how easily he was detected, not even Dumbledore had been able to sense him so easily. Deciding to just go with it he stepped forward. If this man was an issue he could always be gotten rid of, everyone already thought he was dead anyway.

“Hello Tom.” Fleamont didn’t even flinch when he suddenly felt the mans power crackling in fury and had a wand pointed at his face. “Or would you prefer I call you Marvolo? Or something else? Because I have no intention of using any of those other titles you’ve claimed.”

Voldemort gave the man a death glare at the level he only reserved for Dumbledore. What irritated him was the old man just smirked at him. With a snarl he demanded answers.

“Where did you hear those names?”

“Knowing your name was rather important.” Fleamont told him.

“And why would it be important?”

“For when my wife and I filed the adoption papers.”

Voldemort, who had just put his wand away, flicked his wrist and had it in his hand once again, the tip glowing an ominous green. “Do not dare to lie to me.” He hissed in pure fury, his magic causing the temperature to drop until they could all see their breath.

“I am not lying.” Fleamont said calmly, staring the man that was over half a century younger than him down. “If you wish to see the proof all you would need to do is collect your file from the legal archives at the Ministry. I’m sure you could easily find your way around the wards to keep your presence off the record. There are files kept on all legal documents in regards to each individual linked to each individual’s magical name dating back to the founding of the Ministry in 1707.

My wife and I filed every year starting the first day after you started at Hogwarts until you came of age. And I know that we weren’t the only ones. I know Arcturus and Melania also filed, and so did a few other members of the Black family. And I also know of another dozen or so other families that tried to claim you after you finished your first year.”

“Yet every year I was still sent back to the orphanage until I was invited to spend my summers at Rookwood Manor after my third year.” Voldemort sneered.

“That was because all the applications to adopt you were rejected. Formerly, British witches and wizards weren’t as stupid and narrow-minded as the more recent generations are. Many years ago it was understood that marrying close family too often resulted in the end of the family. The result of such marriages are children with physical deformities, infertility, as well as both mental and magical weakness, if they aren’t just squibs. To counter this many families preferred to add fresh blood through blood adoption as well as setting marriage criteria after a certain number of generations.

In my time the more promising or attractive muggle-borns often left the school only for a family to enrol another child in the same year. It was an open secret that any muggle-born that finished in the top ten percent of their year any time during the first three years would be claimed by one of the pureblood families, whether their muggle family willingly gave them up or not was never really investigated.

That all changed after Albus Dumbledore got himself declared deputy headmaster. He was friendly with the son of the Chief Warlock of the time, Segar Podmore. Using his connections and influence Dumbledore managed to have him and the idiot Minister, Pricilla Dupont, make it illegal to adopt without the permission of the childs magical guardian. Podmore, in his position of Chief Warlock was able to put any bill in front of the Minister if he declared it in the interest of child welfare that he claimed was of immediate concern, and Dupont automatically signed off on it and sealed it so it couldn’t be brought before the Wizengamot for 50 years, by the time that timeframe was up Dumbledore had gained too much influence and power so it has never been brought back up again. When the effect of the law was finally made public it resulted in ruining the Podmore family, up until then they were rather popular and powerful, despite being the reason their family was labeled a disgrace the Podmore’s still support the old fool for some reason, Segar did withdraw his support eventually, but his son is clearly an idiot. And Dupont was stripped of her position shortly after but it wasn't just for that, the idiot woman was caught muggle-baiting the muggle Prime Minister, 37 times.

But the effect of the law effectively stopped adoptions in Britain for all muggle-borns or muggle raised, like you. None of them have a magical guardian until they start at Hogwarts. And when they do finally gain one it is a member of staff at Hogwarts. As the deputy, and now full headmaster Albus Dumbledore claims the position of magical guardian of the children, previously it was the heads of house so no one had too many. And petitions to adopt are put in front of him and he has rejected every single one since the day the law passed. Many of us have tried repeatedly to find some way around him or to convince him, but nothing works.

That is why none of us were able to adopt you. Albus Dumbledore rejected every attempt.” Fleamont said, rather short of breath by the end of the explanation and Regulus quickly had one of the elves bring him a cup of tea.

“Of course it was that man…” Voldemort hissed before streaming off to parseltongue as his magic went from cold to hot leaving the room sweltering.

Regulus waited a few moments before he was sure his Lord didn’t have any immediate questions for Lord Potter before he spoke again. “You say that marrying close relatives results in children with problems, but my parents were cousins and both my brother and I are relatively attractive and were both more powerful than many of our year mates at school.”

“I am assuming you haven’t read the Black book of secrets completely yet.” Fleamont said as he glanced over to the still hissing dark lord next to him.

“Not fully, I have only gotten through the founding of the family.” Regulus rubbed his eyes, his family really was to dramatic. Simply stating the founding of the Noble Black family as they gained their title had taken over 50 pages. The Black family books only Lord Black were allowed to see were over 10,000 pages. “Please, speak freely in front of my Lord. If he had any questions I would not refuse to give him the answers myself anyways.”

“As you wish.” Fleamont didn’t miss the end of the hissing. “As I said, many families placed certain requirements on marriage. I can’t tell you the specifics in the Black family given that only Lord Black knows it, but what I can say is that every few generations a Black from a secondary line married back into the main line, as was done with your parents.

What I can tell you is your mother wasn't a full Black. As a potions master I often brewed the blood adoption potions used by most. Some would use their own ritual rooms while others would rent one from Gringotts, but if they rented one from Gringotts they either had to procure the potion from someone like myself or purchase it from the goblins, and the goblins prices were generally rather high since it was difficult for them to make potions specifically designed for humans.

Your mother was blood adopted Yule of her second year. Your aunt and uncle specifically selected her since not only had she proven herself powerful, but she had also let slip to a few other Slytherins she was in a less than ideal home. The plan had always been for her to marry your father so when I was asked to brew the potion it was requested that I make it weak. Rather than a full blood adoption where she would have become fully her adoptive parents child they only just brought her into the family even though they were going to be her parents. Based on the potion I brewed if anyone were to test your parents they would only register as… ninth cousins I believe. That’s why your brother and you are less effected by the inbreeding, although you do know no one would ever claim Sirius is completely stable, correct?” Fleamont smirked as he finished, everyone knew just how wild Sirius could get, he was after all the first Black in Gryffindor in… ever. “The Black family has always managed to avoid the worst of the physical deformities, but there have always been mental health issues. Your three cousins are proof enough of that I do believe, even if your grandfather covered up the worst of it. And I do know there are those that argue the two younger girls, Andromeda and Narcissa I believe their names are, are not mad like their elder sister Bellatrix, but it is a rather open secret amongst many groups that they are simply better at hiding their fits.

Your mother brought in fresh blood and new magic, although I don’t know what specific kind of blood she had. Again, that would most likely be recorded in the family books. But prior to her adoption she was seen in our world as a muggle-born, despite the incorrectness of the term.”

“My mother was a…” Regulus gasped in shock, sending his Lord a weary look.

“What do you mean incorrectness of the term?” Voldemort questioned. He had no intention of holding his followers parentage against him, the woman had been blood adopted by a pureblood family and that was good enough for him, it also did open up a number of avenues to deal with other muggle-borns in future.

“When I was just an apprentice my Master was commissioned to brew large batches of the heritage and lineage potions for a study being conducted by the ICW.” Fleamont started. “You see, Britain is not the only country that has experienced a drop in birth rates of magical children while also experiencing an increase in the birth of squibs. There was a rather purist sentiment that had started a century or so before I was born that seemed to have covered most of the world. There had been a large increase in pureblood families marrying close relatives for a few generations.

The results of the study was that the intermarriage was resulting in the degeneration of the bloodlines. What they did find when they tested those we had referred to as muggle-born was that the magic in their blood had an origin, something that is rather obvious since two muggles are naturally incapable of having a magical child, there has to be a spark of magic in them at the very least.”

“I had heard theories that muggle-born were actually the result of squib lines crossing.” Regulus said. He had found it in an old magical theory journal.

“That can happen, but it is incredibly rare.” Fleamont told him. “Less than 2% of the over 100,000 muggle-borns that were tested proved to be the result of two squib lines.

In the investigation of what happened to squibs they found that each following generation after a squib was born their descendants lost their magic even more. A first generation squib for instance might not be able to cast active magic, but they still have magic. Many of them are blessed with gifts to make up for their lack of power. They tend to have heightened levels of empathy, stronger instincts, some have been shown to be particularly gifted with mind magics, and some are seers, one of the greatest seers, Pythia of Delphi, for instance was known to be a squib. But more thanthat they still have a magical core and can brew lower level potions, do arithmancy, as well as carve and power runes. However, their children do not inherit their gifts but can still do the basic magics. It is the third generation that is the final one, they have no special gifts and can only do the most basic runes, and are no longer able to brew. If by the third generation there is no influx of magic the fourth generation is pure muggle.

As most squibs are shunned by the magical world they in turn shun the magical world and rarely do their descendants become magical. I can’t be overly specific since it has been nearly a hundred years after all, but I believe that only around 20% of those tested showed any evidence of squib blood.

No, the origin of a vast majority of muggle-borns is magical creatures. Most of those tested proved to be within 4 or 5 generations of a magical creature being brought into a family. I believe it was about a 50/50 chance of a child being magical if their parents were a muggle and magical creature. If they weren’t magical that spark of magic would pass down the bloodline for up to 7 generations and could become active at any point, they were never able to locate a specific trigger but many believed it had something to do with a proximity to the lay lines. It’s really just the luck of the draw.

And, by the same token, pureblood families that were known to cross with magical creatures also showed higher levels of magic. It was why many of the ancient pureblood families had their marriage criteria set so the Heir was required to marry a magical creature every few generations. I don’t know why creature inheritances decreased, but they have for some reason. Previously, about a quarter of all magicals had some kind of creature inheritance.”

“If all of this was known when you were young, why did we never learn anything about it?” Regulus questioned in shock.

“Bigotry.” Fleamont shrugged. “By the time the study was finished there was a different Supreme Mugwamp at the ICW and he was one of those known for his purist sentiment. When he was told magicals needed to mix with non-magical or creatures he pitched a fit and had the finished report classified. And now it’s up to Dumbledore to declassify the report, and that man has always made his views on creatures clear. He never does anything that doesn’t benefit him and him alone. The only reason I know and can tell you is that my Master secretly told me what he was doing and the results while he was working on it since he, and all the others that worked on the report, were silenced by the magic used to classify the report.

I know something has to be going on due to the decrease in creature inheritances. In places like South America, most countries in Africa, and much of Asia the creature population has rebounded in the past century, but they have never admitted to what they did to cause that. Many of our oldest families were well known for their creature heritage. The Potters were known to cross over with trickster creatures which is what causes our more mischievous nature. With the Malfoy’s it’s rather obvious, while they were in France, and those still there, were known to marry veela’s every few generations.”

“From what you have said those that were adopted were adopted after they had proven their worth.” Voldemort stated blandly wanting to focus back on his potential adoption. “But you also said you and your wife started filing to adopt me after my first day. Why would you decide you want me then, before I had even proven myself?”

“Because we weren’t trying to adopt you just to continue our family line.” Fleamont told him. “I won’t deny that we wanted children, we truly did, but we specifically selected you because you’re family.”

“I beg your pardon?” Voldemort said in genuine shock. As far as he knew the only family he had left was his son.

“It is an admittedly distant connection, but we are still related. From what I remember my… 7 times great grandfather was your… 9 times great grandfathers younger brother.” Fleamont said thoughtfully.

“How would you even know about a family member that was that distant?” Regulus questioned in shock. Sure, purebloods kept track of their family records, but it was usually only a maximum of 4 or 5 generations of separation.

“Because we were informed by Gringotts when he was born.” Fleamont told them. “After I received the letter telling me he had been born I went to look at the family tapestry, it is one of the ancient goblin made ones so it’s self updating. It showed that your mother had died the same day you were born but that your father was still alive. We just assumed you lived with him. It was only when you came to school that we learned you were in an orphanage. Euphemia and I were friends with your herbology professor since I often had him grow rarer ingredients for me so I asked him to keep an eye out for you for us.”

“But why would Gringotts inform you of his birth?” Regulus questioned. “They are a bank, not a hospital that would have records of births.”

“Gringotts keeps track of the birth of any and all magical children, especially those from our older families. It allows them to know who is in line for what. They also might like to keep track of the population numbers in case they ever feel the need to rebel again. But in this case it was because the account manager was required too.

As I said, our ancestors were brothers. They were actually the younger of three brothers, but the eldest was killed without any children so the families titles transferred to the elder of the two, which was Marvolo’s ancestor. My many times great grandfathers line ended when his daughter married into the Potter line and from that point our families went our separate ways. It wasn't until about 200 years later they got back in contact. The Lord of the time, Corvus, only had a daughter, Melisandre, and she had just decided to marry Marius Gaunt. I feel I should mention, I only have what my ancestor recorded in the Potter family books from the time and what my wife has managed to find given her mastery in history.

The Gaunt family was an ancient family, although they weren’t classed as noble. For a long time they were actually rather well respected, until Marius’s grandfather. The man was charged and convicted of attempted line theft. Specifically, he demanded, and then tried to steal, the titles of Melisandre’s grandfather.

Corvus challenged the contract he was presented by his daughter and Marius, of course, but he wasn't able to stop it, she was an adult at the time and when he pushed it she tested negative for any kind of love potions or compulsions. All he could do was protect the estate from them.

To do that he reached out to his distant cousin, Hardwin Potter. He did not want his daughter and her betrothed to have access to the vaults or seats as he felt neither had the temperament to be able to handle either properly. He set aside a vault for them and their children that had enough to get them all through the rest of their lives with out troubles so long as they handled it well. For the rest of the vaults, he put them into stasis, all except for the investments vault. Since that day all the Potter Lords and Ladies have been responsible for managing the investments, for that we are paid a small fee. It is set up similar to how a goblin investment manager works, the payment is a percentage of the profits made, so we only make money if we make you money. I don’t know what the qualifications are for the titles to be claimed, but so far no one has passed them, and until someone does we Potters just keep going.”

Voldemort was on edge. If the bank informed this man of his birth, did that mean they also informed him of his sons.

Fleamont seemed to understand the look of paternal protectiveness that stole across the man next to him. “They may inform me of any new births in the family, but I am magically sworn to secrecy. I can not tell anyone about any members of the family, I can only speak of it now since you are here. I know the value of secrets.”

Voldemort released a slight amount of tension, if he found out this man had told anyone of his childs existence he would kill him in the most painful way possible. “And you didn’t think I deserved to know about my title?” Voldemort hissed. Things could have been much easier for him politically if he had known he had a title. He didn’t know if he would be able to claim it, but at least he would have been able to say which family he came from.

“Of course we did.” Fleamont said in confusion. “From the time you were an infant Gringotts sent account notices to your father, we didn’t know you weren’t living with him so you naturally wouldn’t have gotten those… He wouldn’t have been able to access your finances regardless.

But after you started at Hogwarts both the bank and I sent you letters to keep you updated on the investments every month as is standard procedure. Even if you weren’t accepted any child you had might be so you deserved to know. We stopped, once again as standard procedure, when you came of age and failed the Title Tests.”

“Why would the bank contact the man that sired me?” Voldemort sneered. “That worthless scum was a muggle.”

Fleamont blinked a few times, the man really knew nothing of his own family. “No, he wasn’t. The names of both of your parents is on the family tapestry, the tapestry is magical and only records those with magic.

Witches and wizards names were recorded in gold I believe, those of creature blood were silver, and squibs were in black. I believe your fathers name, Tom Riddle, was in black. From what I remember there was no record of which family he came from, which would have happened if he had been of a magical family and sent to the muggle world and adopted into the muggle Riddle family, and that would imply he was either a second or third generation squib. But I don’t know which since the tapestry only records the names of those that marry into the family and not their lineage.”

“So both sides of my family were magical.” Voldemort said softly, he still hated the man that sired him, but it was less of a disgrace to be related to him.

“If you use a lineage potion you should easily be able to determine just which family he descended from.” Fleamont told him.

“And just how did I fail a test I never took? And I never received any mail from you or Gringotts about anything, I never even had an account with the bank until a few of the boys took me to the branch office in Hogsmeade when I was in my fifth year.” Voldemort went back to the previous topic.

Fleamont looked at him in confusion for a few moments. “It would make sense for there not being any checks done to see if you had a pre-existing family account if you set up a new vault through the branch office since they don’t generally do that or even have the materials to do so… But the fact you never received the mail is confusing, the fact you say you never took the Title Test even more so.”

“What exactly made you believe he took the Title Tests?” Regulus asked just to clarify the issue.

“Well first of all him publicly announcing he was the Heir of Slytherin.” Fleamont shrugged.

“I claimed that because I am a parselmouth so I obviously must be of his line.” Voldemort announced.

“What does being a parselmouth have to do with anything?” Fleamont said in confusion.

“Only Salazar Slytherin was gifted with the ability to speak to serpents.” Voldemort announced pompously.

“No he wasn’t, he was just the only one that was famous enough for it to be common knowledge.” Fleamont told them. “The ability of parseltongue is the result of naga blood. Salazar Slytherins mother was a full blooded naga. But he wasn't the only one descended from a naga, only a small percentage of those of naga heritage were granted the gift, but it has appeared in many other families.”

“But you have implied he truly is the Heir of Slytherin.” Regulus said. “But how does the Slytherin line cross with the Potter line, I always thought the Potter line was connected to Gryffindor.”

“The Slytherin name came to an end when the last of the Slytherin line married into the line Marvolo is descended from, the Peverell family.” Fleamont said.

“Peverell?” Regulus questioned in shock. “As in the tale of the three brothers.”

“Yes.” Fleamont nodded. “Marvolo is descended from Cadmus while I come from Ignotus. Their grandmother was Sarafina Slytherin.

In spite of what many believe the founders of Hogwarts never received the titles of Lord or Lady, they were instead Dukes and Duchesses. It’s why they don't have seats in the Wizengamot, but they do have a say in the running of Hogwarts. They can propose or veto any actions taken by the Department of Education, board of governors, or even the Hogwarts staff.

Along with the title of Duke Slytherin comes the title of Lord Peverell. And the reason I believed he had taken and failed the Title Tests was because I was informed so. Shortly after Marvolo graduated I received a notice from Gringotts of his blood and magic being tested and denied. But… I remember it being slightly odd, the goblin that conducted the test wasn't the account manager or something. I just figured he just asked to be tested at the teller station.”

“I did no such thing.” Voldemort stated.

“If you never took the test… That would mean someone somehow got some of your blood and a sample of your magic and had it tested, but no honourable goblin would allow a fraud to even attempt such a thing. But if that’s what happened it would explain the family magics rejecting whoever it was and them failing the Title Tests, the family magics would easily identify the fraud.” Fleamont said. “You might want to go to Gringotts secretly and have this investigated.”

“And just how would I do that?” Voldemort questioned. He had dedicated his life to learning magic, he knew very little of how the bank functioned.

“It would need to be done without alerting anyone, even amongst the goblins since there is a chance there is a traitor amongst their ranks.” Fleamont said thoughtfully before looking over at Regulus. “Your best bet would be to have someone like Lord Black arrange a meeting with his account manager and using the private floo. Once there you should be able to trust the Black account manager, explain the situation with him and request for the Peverell account manager, Ironclaw, be called and then take the Title Test there. Or, if you informed me of the date I will be able to inform Ironclaw of what has happened and he can meet you directly in the floo room. It would keep the knowledge of your presence there limited to only two goblins and it would allow the goblins to start the process of figuring out just who preformed that false test and have them dealt with, goblins do not tolerate traitors. The problem is they can not charge anyone for even attempted line theft against a human unless the lord of the family files the charges. As the family was dormant at the time whoever it was can’t be charged, but the goblins actions can be addressed, and it will allow them to find out if there are any others that have been corrupted.”

“Even if I was accepted by the family magics I would never be able to take my seat in the Wizengamot or use my power over Hogwarts.” Voldemort lamented. “The old fool and his followers have gotten me declared an enemy of Britain, I would be arrested on the spot.”

“No, they have gotten Lord Voldemort declared an enemy, not you as a man.” Fleamont pointed out. “That is another thing the goblins would easily be able to assist you with, for a price.

From everything I have seen over my long life, it is obvious that most wizards do not even begin to understand the magic creatures have. It was actually my wife that started to teach me about what they can accomplish assome of the most famous witches and wizards in history either had a creature heritage or were supported by magical creatures. Here in Britain, starting around 150 years ago, most history texts have been edited to downplay if not outright remove the roles creatures played in major events. And those texts that haven’t been edited are often placed on the banned books list and destroyed if they are found.”

“If that’s so, then how do you and your wife know so much?” Regulus questioned. “I understand that your wife has a mastery in history, but where did she get her information?”

“My wife’s family, and now my own family, along with a few others, have payed the admittedly large fee to be able to access the goblin library at Gringotts. Goblins do not care about our laws, they are forced to at least pretend to follow them in public, but once you get off the main atrium floor at the bank all pretence is gone. The idiots at the Ministry have long since forgotten that it is not that the bank is called Gringotts, it is the name of the goblin nation, the bank is just the entrance. And, as per the old treaties, the goblins have the right to self rule in their own nation, and that means they can do as they please. To them knowledge is just as valuable as a blade, so they have a copy of nearly every book or scroll ever written since the founding of their nation over 30,000 years ago and it’s all distributed amongst the libraries hidden under Gringotts banks all over the world. If you pay the fee, you have access to all that knowledge that our governments try to hide from us. And if you are looking for a book or scroll that they don’t have at the particular library you are visiting you can either have it ordered or use their transportation system and travel to the library where it is, just so long as you never inform the Ministry of their true capabilities of course.

But along with all that information comes power. All goblin territories lay directly over lay lines so they can tap into them. If you rent a goblin ritual room, and pay to have the rituals conducted by goblins they can achieve almost anything. And because it is done by goblin magic powered by the lay lines no witch or wizard will even be able to detect what you have done let alone be able to undo it.

That is the power of a magical language. You see, if you cast a spell in any human language it can be countered by any other human language, but a magical language can only be countered by the same magical language, the only other way to counter them is an immense amount of power or time that most humans just aren’t capable of. That is one of the things that made the founders so powerful, all of them had creature heritage’s so many witches and wizards were incapable of undoing their spells. Marvolo, as you are a parselmouth, any spells you cast in parsel will be stronger and harder if not impossible to counter unless by another parselmouth. The same holds true for the goblins.”

“But what can they do to allow me to claim my titles?” Voldemort was stunned by all he was learning. After graduation he had traveled the world for 5 years learning as much as he could, but he had never even heard a quarter of what he was being told.

“Change your name, face, age, add or remove family members, alter the records of who your parents were, or make you into an entirely new person as a whole, even including birth certificate, school records, and even an employment history. But it is all rather costly.” Fleamont listed off.

“How is that even possible?” Regulus gasped in confusion.

“The hall of records of all ministries around the world, including the ICW, are kept magically up to date by having them connected to the lay lines allowing countries to share information without having to physically share files. The goblins are tapped into those same lay lines and they have no issue making a few adjustments as they so choose. It was why so many families used to prefer to do blood adoption rituals at the bank, they could alter all the files needed without ever having to alert the Ministry to what they were doing. From what I have heard, although I can’t confirm it, a few magical children from the muggle world may have been kidnapped before they started at Hogwarts and secretly adopted if their incidents of accidental magic catch the attention of certain individuals since Dumbledore hasn’t yet had a chance to claim control over them.

I may know a few people that may or may not have used the services of Gringotts to change their identities and move to a different country while letting their country of origin believe they died in some accident or another. It’s a good way to escape charges for things since goblins only care if you broke their laws.

They even have rituals that allow them to manipulate time. They can’t move through time itself, that I have heard of anyway. But they can use it to age or de-age a person by a few months so they have a different birthdate to go along with the new face and name. And in the more extreme cases they have a full re-birth ritual that allows a person to be put in optimum health, healing all old injuries as if they never existed, although from what Sirius said it isn’t pleasant.”

“Why would my brother have ever needed a ritual like that?” Regulus demanded in confusion. He and his brother weren’t close, hadn’t been in years, but he was still his brother. Regulus had never forgiven Sirius’s running away from home just to be with his friends. When his grandparents had learned that Sirius ran away they took him in thinking his parents weren’t good parents and his parents had chosen to leave the country. He thought it was because they couldn’t handle having one of their own children turn on them like that. Their parents had always been amazing as far as he knew so he had no idea why Sirius would betray and abandon them, and him, like that.

“Because…” Fleamont didn’t want to have to be the one to disillusion Regulus, Sirius had always hidden the true cruelty of their parents from him since he knew how much his brother had cared for them. But if he didn’t tell him then he would only learn it once he reached that section in the family books where he had no doubt Arcturus would have detailed the injuries Sirius had suffered as a cautionary tale. “You wouldn’t have known… Sirius always made sure to hide it from you in an attempt to protect your relationship with your parents, but…

Your parents were not kind to him like they were to you. When your brother was born your grandfather named him Heir as your father had already been stripped of the position for a reason that I was never privy too. Your parents, your mother in particular, took it as an insult so tried to force him into their way of thinking, believing they would be able to control the family if they controlled him. But as I’m sure you know, your brother can be rather stubborn. The more they tried to force him to do as they wanted the more he rebelled. And the more he rebelled the more they tried to force him to do what they wanted.

After Sirius came to my house when he was 15 I brought your grandfather a copy of the health scan we had done on him so he could understand what had been happening, he most likely placed it somewhere for safe keeping. I won’t go into detail, but it was bad enough that if just left as he was he would always feel pain, the scars would never fade, and he would have difficulty moving given the fact he had nerve damaged caused by exposure to the cruciatus. It was after your mother started using the cruciatus that Sirius realized if he didn’t get out he never would. He had previously never reached out for help because your parents had convinced him what they were doing was normal and he didn’t want to take the risk of them turning on you.

Your grandfather and I agreed given everything he had already been put through he wouldn’t feel safe if he lived with any other member of your family after everything your parents had told him over the years so he stayed with my wife and I after that. It was the reason your grandparents took you in. To allow him to stay with me they had to transfer the Heirship to you and they were worried your parents would do to you what they had done to him even if you were more open to their ideas. Although your parents disowned him your grandfather never did so he is still a member of the Black family and thus, under your protection now.”

Regulus was disgusted to hear his brother had been hurt like that by his parents. He had always blamed his brother for him being taken away, but it had only been done to protect him, protect him as no one had protected his brother. He had hated his brother for years while sympathizing with his parents and now he felt horrible. “Is that why my parents left?”

“They never left.” Fleamont told him coldly, he hated even thinking of those disgusting monsters that had harmed one of _his_ boys. “After I gave your grandfather the results of the scan he and your grandmother went right over. Your grandmother took you away that night so you never needed to know, they felt you were to young to have to know what your parents had done, especially given Sirius stayed as long as he did to keep them from turning their attention to you. Your grandfather then used the family magics to force them to tell him everything.

I only know what happened now because I was there when he told Sirius a few years ago just before he left the country. He wanted him to know that your parents didn’t get away with their actions. It will of course be in the book, but you need to know that your grandfather used the family magics to punish them for their crimes against their own child and the family heir. They are still in their old home under house arrest. A house elf delivers anything needed to keep them alive and healthy, but they are bound to the property. They also have their magic bound so they can not hurt anyone, including each other or themselves.

Before you make any decisions on what you wish to do with them please read your grandfathers entries in the family books about what happened. I understand they are your parents, and from all accounts they were never anything but kind to you, but that is not true for your brother. If you just forgive them your brother will never forgive or trust you again.”

“I can promise to read everything before I do anything.” Regulus assured in a somber tone.

“As interesting as all of this is I doubt this is what you came here to discuss.” Voldemort said. He was disgusted that members of a family as noble as the Black’s had had child abusers hiding amongst them. Although it did allow him to understand just why Sirius Black had never accepted any of his offers to come over to his side, and there had been many, if he had been abused by those espousing the dark agenda he may have seen all those in the dark as a threat. He above all understood the damage abuse could have. He was just grateful that there had been those around who arranged to keep Regulus from suffering the same way as his brother had, if they hadn’t Regulus may have been turned against him as well.

“Indeed.” Fleamont chuckled at just how distracted he had become. “I came here about Hadrian.”

“And just who is he?” Regulus questioned.

“Your nephew.” Fleamont said with a slight smirk at the shocked look that was seen in Regulus’s eyes.

“Siri had a kid?” Regulus said.

“In a manner of speaking.” Fleamont felt his shoulders sink at having to admit what his own son had done to others. “I… Marvolo, I’m sure you are aware of the prophecy that Dumbledore is constantly crowing about lately.”

“I am.” Voldemort said with a sneer. Seeing the look of confusion on his followers face he decided to give him some basic information, he knew he could trust Regulus not to tell anyone. “Years ago there was a supposed prophecy stating that a child was going to be born that would have the power to defeat me. I wasn't given the full prophecy but it was said the child would be born at the end of July, and that very July two boys were born to members of the fools Order.

I, despite what the old man might wish, do not go off randomly killing infants. Until I have the full prophecy I have no intention of harming either child.” At this Voldemort turned to the elderly man to assure him he had no intention of just walking up and killing his grandchild that was only a little over half a year younger than his own son.

“I am not worried.” Fleamont said. “It is quite obvious you have regained your sanity an I am glad for it. But that isn’t what this is about.

Yes, Lily had Evan at the end of July 31st, but something only a few people know is that just after midnight she gave birth to another boy, Harry. Dumbledore had already told them of the prophecy and convinced them that Evan was going to make them famous. I am ashamed to admit James loves the idea of being famous, and so does Lily.

Like many new parents they found themselves overwhelmed with the needs of newborns. And since their attention needed to be divided between two boys they felt Evan wasn't getting all the attention he needed so with a little encouragement they decided to send Harry to live with Lily’s magic hating muggle sister until it was time for him to start Hogwarts.”

“They did what?” Voldemort hissed in absolute fury.

“They got rid of him.” Fleamont sighed in shame. “Sirius and his mate Remus were thankfully Harry’s magically bound godfathers so they felt his destress and went over immediately to check on him. When they were told what happened they came right to me, after Remus broke James nose of course. I was able to use the family magics to track Harry down and get him back. He’d only been with the filth for a few hours and already had injuries to his arm. It was like rather than picking him up properly they just grabbed and carried him by one of his arms, leaving bruises and hurting his shoulder. When I got there they were eating lunch a my baby grandson who would only be three months old the next day was in a cupboard being completely ignored.

There was no way I could ever trust James and Lily with him after that. Thankfully I had Sirius and Remus who already loved him as if he was there own. With the permission and presence of Arcturus as Lord Black Sirius and Remus blood adopted him the very next day. Magic granted him the name Hadrian Black-Lupin-Potter.”

“I thought you said blood adoptions were illegal.” Regulus said.

“They are, unless you do them at Gringotts and have the permission of the magical guardian. James and Lily willingly gave up his custody so it came to me as the Head of the Potter Family and I gave my full permission for the adoption. And Arcturus formally recognized him as Sirius’s child and a child of House Black.

I specifically requested he be accepted in to the Black family as the Blacks are an Ancient and Noble House while the Potter’s are only a Noble House. As such, the Black Lord would easily be able to override any Potter Lord in regards to the care of my grandson. I personally would never act in anything but his best interest, but one day I will pass, and I no longer hold faith that my son can be trusted to do the same. I ensured that they were safely out of the country after the adoption so none of them could be manipulated by Dumbledore anymore.

And that is why I came here. For you to best protect him you need to be aware that he exists. I know things have been difficult between you and your brother for the past years, but I hope you will not allow that to keep you from acting in the best interest of a child that is a Black by both blood and magic.”

“I can promise you I will not do anything that will harm my brothers son.” Regulus assured. And he meant that, all those hate filled thoughts about his brother abandoning him had been put to rest and now he just regretted all the time they had lost in their stubborn pride. He would allow no harm to come to his brothers child, even if it meant going against his Lord, although he would rather not.

“I’m glad you can be counted on to protect your nephew.” Voldemort said, giving his follower a rare smile, he had always felt an odd connection to the younger man. “He has suffered enough due to that old man.

But Potter, I must just go back to our previous topics for a moment. Given how much you seem to know about all of this, how would I go about getting these goblin rituals? And while we’re on the topic, how long would it take, what would the cost be, moreover, if I even am accepted by the titles what are their financial situation?” Normally he wouldn’t lower himself to rely on someone else like this, but this was his fastest way to get the information and this had the potential to change everything.

Fleamont tilted his head side to side. “Despite seeming rather knowledgeable about things like goblin rituals it’s really just things I’ve heard my wife tell me over the years, she’s the one that knows this kind of stuff better. She has a mastery in history but has always held a fascination with the magic and practices of magical beings around us.

For the finances of the families you are entitled to I only have information about the investment account. That account is set to be 10% of the monetary value of the estate and is levelled every 50 years, so, if the investments have made money the excess is transferred back into the main vault until it’s balanced, and if the account has lost money then some is added. From the last document I saw on the investments they are currently worth just a bit over 30 million galleons and will be due to be levelled with the main vaults next in 18 years.

That is more than enough to pay for the rituals. I think Euphemia once mentioned they offered a package deal for an entirely new identity including new face, name, and birth date for 1 million galleons. Something you need to understand about goblins, honour means everything. They will try to loophole you for every sickle and knut of profit for themselves, but they will never outright steal. Always read any contract thoroughly and pay special attention to the fine print, and always make sure to know the cost of anything and everything before agreeing to or signing anything, they especially like to add service fees of indiscriminate cost on those who don’t bother to verify everything. They don’t see thoroughness as an insult, rather they see it as a sign of intelligence and actually prefer to work with those that don’t just trust everything they are told.

If you are interested in accessing their library archives the fee for that is 10 thousand galleons for 5 years. If you pay the fee you will be given what amounts to a library card. When you go to the bank all you need to do is quietly go over to the carts, show them your card, and they will take you there so no one else knows your business.

In the case of the rituals being preformed, they only take a few hours, but it can be a year or more before the magic settles. If someone like Dumbledore or Moody were to see you before the magic settled they would just believe you to be under a glamour. They would never admit it, but Moody’s fake eye and Dumbledore’s glasses are magical artifacts that have been enchanted with a dark magic viewing spell that allows them to see through spells like glamours and invisibility cloaks.

But during that time you can still effect the government. When I decided to retire from public life I was worried about what James would do with the Potter seat in the Wizengamot since he had already shown his blind devotion to Dumbledore. Euphemia gave me some rather useful information that I believe you would benefit from.

The last major overhaul of the rules of the Wizengamot occurred about 200 years ago. At that time the Minister was a member of the Black family and the Chief Warlock was his elder brother, Lord Black. Working together they managed to achieve some rather Slytherin like changes. When a seat is claimed it needs to be publicly announced, unless the changes are submitted on December 31st. If you are accepted you can file your claim on that day and will automatically be accepted, when the new year of the Wizengamot is opened it is not classified as new business anymore since the changes officially occurred the previous year allowing you to take your seats without needing to state your claim.

But, not only are there ways around publicly announcing yourself, there are also ways around needing to be in the chamber to vote. If you filed your claim and assigned someone like Regulus as your proxy at the same time you would be able to seal the identity of yourself under head of house rules, no one would even be able to see your official voting record without your approval, it would give you time to get everything in place before publicly announcing yourself and still be able to show you had been involved with the Ministry for years.

What most people don’t understand is the original purpose of a proxy, they were actually meant to be decoys. During controversial votes or times of civil unrest the Wizengamot members used to send a proxy in their place. The vote of a proxy is counted, unless the Lord or Lady uses the lordship ring to override their vote. While the Blacks were in control they adopted protection policies used by many other countries and added secret voting areas. In particular, they added individualized Wizengamot voting rooms in Gringotts, and negotiated a contract to be able to use the ones other Ministries had established in their own branches.

What this means is, even if you have a public proxy, if on the day of a vote you go to any branch of Gringotts and request to use their voting rooms you can override your proxies vote. Most wouldn’t see a point in this as they would figure it would still show up on the records with your true vote. But, if you’ve sealed your votes the only vote people would know about would be the public one your proxy makes.

It’s what I currently do with the Potter vote. James, or more often times Dumbledore, cast the vote for my seat since my retirement. But, I go to Gringotts on voting days and override their votes. They publicly vote the Potter seats in favour of whatever idiocy they want, and I vote how I want to vote. My vote is the one that is counted, not theirs.”

Voldemort chuckled. “And that would be what has been driving the old fool crazy. He goes over the voting records every single time something he supports fails trying to figure out just who is voting against him, he doesn’t realize it’s one of the very seats he votes that is going against him.”

“Oh, I’m not the only one that does that.” Fleamont smiled. “I’ve seen a few others going into the bank around the same time as I do that have public proxies that support Dumbledore or they have Dumbledore himself.

If you even want to take it a step further for privacy you would just need to go to another country to vote as they have voting rooms in their banks too. That method of voting is used in France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany, Romania, Slovakia, Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands and a few others I believe. You can cast your vote from any of those countries as you please.”

It was a lot of information to take in, but Voldemort and Regulus were both glad that they had met with a Potter for the first time in pretty much ever. Before Fleamont left, since he knew Regulus was friendly with Severus Snape, and he suspected the man was one of Marvolo’s followers, he asked that if either man should see the taciturn new potions master to ask him to respond to his letters as he had a project he would like to collaborate on but he figured the man was seeing the Potter seal and throwing it away.

* * *

Voldemort did as Lord Potter suggested. The first thing he did was arrange for one of his people to retrieve the file on Tom Marvolo Riddle, making sure they have no idea who the boy was.

The information is just like Fleamont said it was. Fleamont and his wife, along with over a dozen or so other families all tried to adopt him multiple times during his childhood. And every single one of the rejection forms were signed by Albus Bloody Dumbledore. If he hadn’t wanted to kill the man previously he really did after that.

With that done he had Regulus arrange a meting with his account manager and tagged along, although he would never refer to it in such plebeian terms. Once they were in the private floo room they were met by their account managers and guided along separate paths to the different offices.

“It has been brought to my attention that we have matters to discuss.” An elderly goblin he had been told was named Ironclaw said as soon as they were safely ensconced in his office.

“It would seem so.” Voldemort was less than impressed, although he couldn’t lay all the blame on the goblins, he had never bothered to reach out to them about his belief in his Heir status.

“I will inform you that the goblin that falsified your Title Test has been located, interrogated, and punished. The traitor will be spending the rest of his life in the pit. Through his interrogation we have determined that Albus Dumbledore placed a mail redirect on you when you started at Hogwarts so any mail from us goes to him. When he received the notification that you could come in to try and claim the title he arranged to have someone come to the bank disguised as you with a sample of both your blood and magic and attempt to claim your heritage, thankfully your family magics recognized the fraud and attacked the fraud, from what we learned whoever it was was left a squib for their crimes, even the goblin nation was not aware family magics could or would react so violently to someone so we believe there was more to it but we have no evidence for that. As compensation for allowing ourselves to be tricked with the fraud and stolen mail the nation is willing to offer the removal of the mail ward free of charge while still sending periodic falsified letters to Dumbledore under the guise of your account reports to keep him from knowing the truth.”

Voldemort thought for a few moments. “That would be acceptable, however I do not want him to know anything about my true financial status.”

“That shall be done, although he has not had the full scope of the true value of your accounts as the full account balance has never been written in any of the previous letters outside your own personal accounts. The account reports we have been sending every month only states the increase or decrease in the investment accounts without ever mentioning how much is in the account as we believed your father had told you or that you had already been rejected.” Ironclaw told him.

“Lord Potter stated that he didn’t know what the requirements were to claim my titles. Would you be able to tell me?”

Ironclaw pulled out a bowl of pre-made potion, parchment and quill. “First we will need to perform a lineage test, it will tell us who you are and from which families you hail.”

“Yes, Lord Potter said that according to the family tapestry my… father, was from a squib line, but I had always believed he was a muggle. I would like to know if he had any magical family left.”

“Add seven drops of your blood to this potion and it will tell us what you would like to know.” Ironclaw held out the potion. Once the blood was added he mixed it and placed the quill in it so it could absorb the potion. When the potion was fully in the enchanted quill he balanced it on the parchment and let it start to write.

Once the quill fell over the goblin looked at it with a raised eyebrow before handing it over to Voldemort and instantly sending off notes. Voldemort was confused by those actions, until he looked at the parchment himself.

Name: Tom Marvolo Riddle

Mother: Merope Delphinus Riddle (Nee Gaunt)

Father: Tom Cyril Riddle

Family Lines:

Slytherin (Maternal)

Peverell (Maternal)

Le Fey (Paternal)

The worthless fool who had sired him was descended from Morgana Le Fey. That was just…

“What exactly does this mean for me?” Voldemort questioned in slight shock. Over the years he had focused more on learning magic rather than learning about pureblood inheritance laws since he had had no idea that he might one day benefit from them.

“I only oversee the Slytherin and Peverell estates so I can not give you specifics in regards to your Le Fey heritage, I do not even know if there are any other family members or not. I have sent a message to the goblin that manages that estate and she will meet us here in an hour.

Currently you are able to test for the Slytherin Dukedom and the Peverell Lordship. However, before you do either there are a few things that we need to address. The last holder of both titles, commonly known as Corvus Peverell, placed specific requirements for any of his descendants to reclaim the title.

While most believe he only had a daughter that is not the truth, he had a son who was a few years older than his sister, but the son was killed in what was labelled an accident. Lord Peverell believed it was his wife and her lover that killed the child as both disapproved of creatures and the son had come into a creature inheritance on his 17th birthday. As punishment he challenged the man to a duel, which he won killing him, and confined his wife. That was why he believed his daughter turned against him, she was much closer with her mother and had learned her prejudice.

When her son first came into his creature inheritance Lady Peverell did not wish to allow the chance her daughter would too so had her bound to ensure she, nor any in her line, could go through any inheritance they had. Like both mother and daughter, the man the daughter married was opposed to creatures.

Lord Peverell required that for any to claim the title they must have the binding removed and be of creature heritage themselves. They must remain as the head of the family for a minimum of 20 years or else the titles will return to dormancy. He felt that would ensure the next Lord or Lady, Duke or Duchess, had not inherited the bigotry of his wife or daughter. He even arranged payment in advance to have the unbinding ritual covered for any and all who may want it to try for the title.”

Voldemort sat back in thought. He wasn't outright opposed to creatures, but he did know things were difficult for them. If he was unbound and found himself to be a restricted creature then he would never gain power in their government. He would need to remove the anti creature laws, but he didn’t have power in the government unless he unbound himself and went through a creature inheritance. “And just what creature might I become?”

“From the Slytherin line the primary creatures were naga and draken. From the Peverell family they were various kinds of vampire. Lord Peverell’s son himself came into the inheritance of living vampire.”

“Living vampire? Then how could he have been killed?” Voldemort had heard of living vampires during his travels and studies. They were considered the royalty of the vampire world and were nearly impossible to kill, he knew it was possible, but no one who knew ever recorded it that he knew of.

“One method of killing a living vampire is for them to have their heart cut out by a blood relative. That is why Lord Peverell believed his wife was involved in the death of their son.” Ironclaw informed him blandly. The wards on the room would ensure no one outside knew any of this anyways.

“I would like the unbinding so I can see if I can take the titles.” Voldemort said respectfully.

* * *

It took an hour and a half for Voldemort to return to the office and he was still feeling slightly out of it. As soon as the unbinding ritual was finished his creature inheritance hit him with all the weight of the Hogwarts Express.

He was a living vampire.

This thrilled him since it made him that much harder to kill and would greatly extend his life. Despite what muggles thought Vampires could not live forever, they just had extremely long lives that would seem like an eternity to a muggle. The average vampire lived 250 to 500 years unless they were killed. Living vampires could live between 500 to 1000 years. He just hoped his son got the same inheritances, he had absolutely no desire to outlive his son.

“Would you like to take the title test now?” Ironclaw questioned.

Voldemort just nodded, his mouth felt weird, he had an entirely new set of teeth and wasn't used to them. He was handed two ring boxes. Most of those silly little fools who had never actually seen a lordship ring thought they were intricately designed, truth was they were just a ring with the family crest on it. The Slytherin ring was platinum with the Slytherin crest and the Peverell ring was onyx with the Peverell crest. When he put each ring on he felt as the family magics pushed against his own as they tested him. It only took a few minutes for each of the rings to accept him.

“I greet you Duke Slytherin, Lord Peverell.” Ironclaw said formally. “Now, Lord Potter informed me you were considering looking for a new identity, is this correct?”

“Yes.” Voldemort confirmed. “I wish to have an entirely new identity.” Voldemort opened the account ledgers that had been passed over to him once the rings accepted him and was rather startled by just how much he was now worth. He had managed to get a decent vault after he graduated from Hogwarts, he had claimed his filthy (non) muggle fathers property and sold off a great deal and converted their muggle money to wizarding currency. He also received a tithe from those that followed him, there were many of the wealthier individuals that had hoped to buy their way up his ranks, it was how he had gotten his manor. He was no longer hurting for money as he had been as a child, but what the account ledgers showed was beyond his wildest imagining. “I was informed the goblin nation had a package deal for around a million galleons for an entirely new identity.”

“Indeed we do.” Ironclaw confirmed, seeing a great opportunity to make a vast profit for the nation. “However, the million galleon deal only covers a new face and name. For everything to be done I would assume you would want to include altering your family tree slightly so you are still from the same families but from a different line so no one can connect your new identity with your old. We can also provide school records and a work history. And we will also need to discuss your son.”

“What about my son.” Voldemort said in a cold voice. He didn’t like anyone mentioning his child.

“We unbound you, but he will still be bound, only any future children you might have will be free of the binding since birth.” Ironclaw said. “Also, if we are going to magically change your name and ancestry he will need to be here so we can alter his with yours so it won’t strain your parental bond.”

Voldemort thought but nodded his understanding. “I have also heard you have something called a rebirth ritual that can fix past injuries.” Voldemort still had aches, pains, and scars from his time in the orphanage.

“Indeed we do.” Ironclaw grinned. Taking care of all that would earn a great deal of profit and get him a great deal of honour.

Before any other negotiations there was a knock on the door and another goblin entered when called.

“I am Silverblade, the Le Fey account manager. My presence was requested.” The goblin looked just like any other goblin Voldemort had seen before but her voice was much lighter and musical in comparison to the gravely tone of the males.

Ironclaw handed over the lineage test and showed Voldemort was a part of the Le Fey family. He questioned the current status of the family.

“Currently the family is dormant.” Silverblade answered. “The last magical family member, Lady Natalia Le Fey, passed about 80 years ago. Her brother Cyril was known to be a squib.”

“So more than likely he was my grandfather.” Voldemort said thoughtfully, he hated having to acknowledge the man as being related to him, but it would get him more power so it was worth it. The Le Fey family wasn't like other ancient families, the Le Fey family was an Imperial House. If he had the Le Fey title he would be able to achieve a great deal as Imperial House had the same powers and the Chief Warlock in the Wizengamot, which meant he would be able to introduce bills and veto bills. The current Chief Warlock was Cameron Fawley, but Voldemort knew that Dumbledore expected himself to be made Chief once James Potter was able to fully claim the Potter title and call for a vote. Fawley was a light supporter, but he tended to lean more neutral, which was one of the only reason he was tolerated in the position even though the dark had one extra seat. If Voldemort had the Le Fey title he would be able to ensure that never happened and put one of his own people in place.

“Possibly.” Silverblade said. “You can try to claim the title, but I will warn you, even if you are accepted you will not have full control over the house.”

“And why not?” Voldemort questioned.

“Lady Morgana Le Fey wasn't known for her tolerance of men. The Le Fey title follows women, not men. As you may be the last surviving member of the family you could claim the title, but only a female has full control. You would be a temporary Lord and the title would pass to your first born daughter on her majority.”

“What exactly would I be able to do and not do if I took the title?” Voldemort asked thoughtfully.

“As a male you would be able to use the Le Fey seat without any constraints, it is the finances and properties where you would be limited. You would receive access to the Lords Vault, which gives a yearly allowance. You would not be able to control financial details beyond that and the investments account. Each recognized member of the family has their own inheritance vault that you can not alter so they would be taken care of. For properties, you can visit, but can not remain in the properties for more than one week every month. And, you would be strictly forbidden from selling any artifact or property belonging to the family.” Silverblade told him.

“With my other titles I am perfectly set financially, but I would be greatly interested in seeing the family library so I could learn.” Voldemort said.

Silverblade examined the human before her for a moment before pulling out a box that held the Le Fey Lordship ring, she left the Ladyship ring in her pocket. Under her watchful eye the white gold ring tested the man, it took about 5 minutes and was obviously less than comfortable before it accepted him.

“We greet you Imperial Lord Le Fey.” Ironclaw and Silverblade said at the same time.

“You will need to owl me to set up a time to meet so I can go over the finances with you.” Silverblade said as she stood up. “I shall go and make the arrangements for a Le Fey Lord.”

“I shall owl you later this week. I will also inform you now that I have a 2 year old son, no one is to know of his existence.” Voldemort hated having to allow anyone else to know of his child, but he would not deny his son his birth right.

Silverblade nodded before leaving. Once she was gone Ironclaw and Voldemort set about negotiating a price for the rituals Voldemort wanted to change his identity.

* * *

Three weeks after first claiming his titles the rituals were conducted. Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Voldemort became a completely new man.

When the rituals were conducted magic granted him the new name, Alexander Corvus Le Fey-Slytherin-Peverell, known by the common name Alexander Peverell and his birth date was February 2nd. Alexander was tall, had chestnut brown hair with auburn highlights. His formerly light blue eyes darkened to a sapphire colour. His pale white skin darkened to a few shades lighter than his own sons. But the biggest change was in the shape of his face, he had inherited the round boyish face his squib father had gotten from his muggle mother, now his face was leaner and had the aristocratic defined features indicative of a pureblood with high cheekbones and a slim nose. There were traces of his ancestry, but they were well hidden.

Along with the new face came new parents. His new father was listed as Tiberius Peverell-Gaunt. In the goblins research of the family they found that the first born son of Melisandre and Marius Gaunt ran away at the age of 9, his family had suspected him to be a squib and he fled before they could kill him. According to the records he had indeed been a squib, but no one knew, and he had lived out his life hidden wherever he was. He married but never fathered any children. Tiberius Peverell-Gaunt was recorded on the family tree as his great great grandson. His mother was listed as Angelina Le Fey, granddaughter of Natalia Le Fey.

It made him his own fifth cousin once removed. And since his great great grandfather was older than Voldemort’s he got the titles over him. He also had them record his year of birth being 3 years after his original one to give him that much more distance.

Blaise had come through the rituals without any major changes, beyond his name. He was now Blaise Angelus Le Fey-Slytherin-Peverell-Zabini, known by the name Blaise Peverell. The binding had been removed so he might come into a creature inheritance, but they wouldn’t know until he turned 17. Voldemort was just pleased that the bond between him and his son had only strengthen during the rituals rather than straining as they had worried.

Originally Voldemort had not planned for anyone outside of Severus knowing his new face since he had been present during the rituals as he brewed the potions needed as well as he looking after Blaise while Voldemort was undergoing any ritual he wasn't needed there for. But that changed as soon as he next saw regulus and his vampire immediately recognized him as his mate. After a few more discussions they decided to include Augustus Rookwood in on the new identity as he would serve as proxy for him while the titles were sealed since Regulus was being watched too closely as he was new to the Wizengamot.

As Fleamont had warned it would take about a year for the magic of the rituals to settle so Voldemort needed to keep a low profile until then. But it served him well as it allowed him to privately court Regulus.


	5. Just Who is Albus Dumbledore

The man known as Albus Dumbledore was in fact, not Albus Dumbledore. But that had been the name he had gone by the longest, as far as he could remember.

His original life had begun hundreds of years ago, but he wasn't exactly sure when. A combination of time and a few improperly performed rituals had resulted in him not having the clearest of memories.

He knew he had originally been born in a lower-class family with multiple children. He wasn't the oldest, but he also didn’t think he was the youngest, he honestly hadn’t bothered to even try to remember anything about his parents or siblings, they had just been in his way. Since their family worked on a farm to earn their housing only his eldest of siblings was able to go to school, he had been expected to work menial labour and he knew he had hated it. The estate they lived on belonged to the Podmore family, them he did remember. They had treated him like he was nothing. He had taken great joy in using the Podmore Lord to pass his ideas while destroying the families credibility, he got even more joy from the fact that the last remaining member of the family, the fool Sturgis, followed him like a servant after all his ancestors had put him through.

Despite being denied a proper education he had been a clever boy. He had tried to take his rightful position leading society, but no one would listen to him. To those bigoted fools he was a serf, and that was all he would ever be.

Instead he had dedicated his life to showing them he was better than them. It had been hard since he chose to focus on learning rather than earning an income, but he had refused to let himself be held back. So what if he stole, it was all for the greater good, he was going to be the leader of their world.

But it never worked out for him, not in that life. More often than not he was forced to sleep in transfigured tents or in fields. On occasion he would be able to break into a proper house while the owners were away. He couldn’t stay in a manor like he knew he deserved as they always had house elves that would report him. But he did manage to break into a few to search their libraries once he learned how to incapacitate house elves, not that the spell lasted more than an hour at a time.

It was when he managed to break into the Peverell library that he found it. A ritual that would allow him to move his soul into a new body while getting rid of the bodies original soul. He was just disappointed he couldn’t use it on the Peverell Heir that had been home at the time he had broken in as he had had to kill the fool for getting in his way. Instead he stole the book and went in search of someone he could use.

The only problem for him was that the body he wanted would need to be prepared for months before he could claim it and none of the powerful families would allow any member to disappear for that length of time and then just accept them back without any questions or tests, and that meant he couldn’t become a part of an old pure blood family, yet. He knew he would just need to rise up in society, maybe become a tutor to one of the rich brats.

He didn’t know the exact timing, but he believed he had been in his late 60’s when he had finally swapped into the body of someone knew. But that body didn’t allow him to rise high enough either. He ended up jumping from body to body for a few hundred years, growing more and more power hungry as he went.

Eventually, in the late 1600’s he managed to gain at least some power when he claimed the body of the man recorded in history texts as Harpo the Horrible. He was a descendant of the Dark Lord Herpo the Foul who had once ruled in ancient Greece.

He had caught the man while he had been working on recruiting his own followers. Once he had full control of the body he continued one of the mans original plans to take control, although he didn’t bother with his more ludicrous ideas of strengthening the newly made Statute of Secrecy. The only time he had even managed a modicum of success and comfort was when he was dealing with muggles as they were much easier to control, when they weren’t trying to burn you at the stake.

It was during his time as Harpo that had caused the worst of his memory loss. He had found some of Herpo’s old books on horcruxs and decided to try experimenting a little. After all, Herpo claimed to have lived nearly 900 years.

That had ultimately been his downfall, and just when he was becoming successful. He had lost his grip on sanity and his magic had been all over the place. His second in command, the traitor Pollux Black, had killed him claiming he was insane and would destroy everything. Because of the horcrux he had been bound to the world in spirit form.

It had taken him over 100 years to repair his soul, and by then he had been so weak he had needed a body quickly, but the soul inside it needed to be even weaker than he was. He wasn't going to be able to prepare the body properly so who ever he used needed to be on the verge of death. A few more years searching as a disembodied spirit, or possibly a decade or two, he wasn't exactly sure, and he found the perfect host.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.

The boy had been 9 years old at the time. In his spirit form he could see that the boy had a very powerful core, but an incredibly weak soul. The reason for the weak soul was because in spite of his magical potential the boy was as dim as it was possible to be. The boy had tried to see under water by cutting off the top of one of his mothers clear vases and using the bottom to cover his eyes, but it wasn't large enough to cover his nose and mouth, and then jumped into the bog near his home. He was pulled out when his younger brother ran and told their parents what he had done, but he had been under so long he had fallen into a coma.

When he found the boy his soul had already been moving on so he just gave it the final push. Waking up in the body everyone claimed it was a miracle since the local healer had said there was nothing that could be done, his new mother was convinced she had been the one to heal him as she hadn’t left him since the accident had occurred three days previous.

He enjoyed being Albus. The boy was fairly powerful, much more so than a few of the bodies he had had, not that he could remember them that well. The Dumbledore’s were an old family, although much to his disappointment they were neither titled nor wealthy, but he had lived in much worse conditions. He was even able to attend Hogwarts for the very first time, some of the bodies he had had attended in their youth, but he had always taken over as an adult.

And given he had lived for so long it allowed him to appear brilliant to those around him as he already knew nearly everything they were taught. He greatly enjoyed all the praise he got for how smart he was. Those who had known him prior to the accident were stunned, they had always thought him a halfwit and he enjoyed showing them how wrong they were.

When he had been 18 he had been ready with a plan. His new friend Gellert Grindelwald was going to fill the role of the Dark Lord and he would be the Light Lord. He may have hated the Black family for stopping his rise as Harpo, but he did remember one thing Pollux had said to him just as he killed him. He said he should have expected it since those in the dark had ambition, if he wanted blind followers he should be in the light where they all acted like sheep.

For years it worked, but not as much as he would have liked. Gaining followers in the light wasn't the same as it was in the dark. In the light you had to make them trust you, in the dark you just showed how powerful you were and forced them to do as you wanted. Because of the different methods needed to gain followers Gellert became much more powerful than him much faster. They still worked together, but it was obvious to Albus that Gellert looked down on him.

Ultimately he had to destroy his friend and sometimes lover when he decided to just leave Albus behind. Who did that man think he was, Albus had lived for hundreds of years, he deserved to rule. It was obvious to him that the dark just couldn’t be trusted to know their place.

And that was when he started his new plans. After his defeat of Gellert he finally started to gain the fame and recognition he had always deserved. Finally people started to look to him as they always should have done.

He needed a new Dark Lord to defeat.

And he had just the person. A young orphan named Tom Riddle would be graduating soon and the boy was a parselmouth and everyone knew how evil that made him. In truth he himself had started the rumours that Slytherin and Gryffindor hated each other and that Slytherin was evil, sometimes it entertained him just how some stories stuck around and got warped and twisted by time, when he had started the rumour it had just been that they fought and tried to kill each other.

He compelled the boy to start making horcruxes, he knew just how crazy that had made him. From there it just took a few compulsions to set him on the right track. For a few years he had worried it hadn’t worked properly when he didn’t hear anything, but then in the mid 1970’s it started. Little Tom was going by the nickname Lord Voldemort that he had made up for the boy while he was at school and compelled him to use. He started mass attacks and the people turned to him looking for him to save them.

But he couldn’t do it too quickly. He wanted to draw it out and see just how much they would give him. But by the time he started answering the peoples pleas he realized his mistake, Tom had grown too powerful. Albus was strong, but he was also getting old and his magic was on the decline while Tom’s was just reaching its peak. Even with adding leaches to his followers to boost his power he was barely able to stand against him. Unfortunately, while he was in a body he couldn’t see the strength of a persons core or he would have taken over the boy rather than making him his opposition.

And then there was that prophecy. It was aggravating to him that he was being denied his rightful fame for defeating the man, but it also gave him a new plan.

He had of course had to alter the prophecy wording a bit to make sure it caught Toms interest in his insanity, although Tom’s tactics had changed recently and it was worrying. He knew the prophecy was about Tom’s death, but the wording was just to vague to really catch Tom’s attention.

Once he had the wording right he made sure he was in a place where one of Tom’s people would overhear and then compelled Trelawney to give the prophecy again. And it had worked even better than he had planned. It was the Snape boy that overheard it. He used the mans love of Lily Potter to make him his spy.

Over they years he had used a few spells and potions to make sure the right couples got together and had children that he knew would support him. He had been thrilled when James and Lily got together all on their own, he had actually been considering setting James up with Hestia Jones and Lily with Severus so she could convince him to spy for them. But James and Lily would do well together and he still got Snape in the end.

And then their child had been born right on time for the prophecy. He was thrilled.

He already had the next 2 decades planned. Evan Potter would defeat Tom while losing the rest of his family. Albus would then send him to live with Lily’s magic hating sister to grow up. Once it was time Evan would latch on to him as he would be the one to save him from the muggles and would do anything for him. Albus would test and train him while he was at Hogwarts. Since he knew Tom had multiple horcruxes he knew he would return and he was planning for that to occur around his 4th or 5th year, if it happened sooner it was fine since there were other horcruxes to use for Evan to just defeat him again if needed.

Evan would defeat Tom the final time just in time for him to finish his education and claim his title from his late father. He would have to arrange for something to happen to the twin he had already gotten rid of so he couldn't be in the way. Once that was done he would have to marry and have a child, Albus was thinking about possibly using the Weasley’s girl, or maybe the Bones girl. The Weasley family was older, but the Bones’s had a better reputation.

Either way, once a son was born the girl would die, and the care of the child would pass to the girls family since Evan would be to busy taking control under Albus’s guidance. Then, the great Albus Dumbledore, mentor of Lord Evan Potter, would pass away. No one would know that his soul would have just moved into the body of his own protégé.

He would rule for decades as Evan Potter, maybe defeating another Dark Lord he created. In his old age he would become Headmaster of Hogwarts once again, Albus really did like that job since it gave him so much control over the children. When Evan passed Albus would move on to his son, or possibly grandson, he missed being young.

All he needed was for Tom to attack. But the man was being difficult.

Evan was almost 3 and still nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been going through some of my files and have found a bunch of old fics I never got around to posting so I'm going to be going over them and adding them over the next few weeks. This is one of them.


End file.
